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THE LIFE OF WILLIAM MORRIS 
 
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THE LIFE OF 
 
 WILLIAM MORRIS 
 
 BY 
 
 J. W. MACKAIL 
 
 VOLUME II 
 
 NEW IMPRESSION 
 LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO. 
 
 39, PATERNOSTER ROW, LONDON 
 NEW YORK, BOMBAY, AND CALCUTTA 
 1907 
 
BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE. 
 
 First printed, April 1899; Reprinted, May 1899; 
 October 1899. 
 
 New and cheaper edition, large crown 8vo, 1901. 
 
 Reprinted, October 1907. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 VOLUME II 
 
 PAGE 
 
 CHAPTER XII 
 
 London and Kelmscott: Theories of Art and 
 
 Life: 1879-1881 1 
 
 CHAPTER XIII 
 
 Merton Abbey: 1 88 1 «. ...... 31 
 
 CHAPTER XIV 
 
 Concentration: 1882 . . 66 
 
 CHAPTER XV 
 
 The Democratic Federation: 1 883-1 884 ... 91 
 
 CHAPTER XVI 
 
 The Socialist League : 1885-1886 131 
 
 CHAPTER XVII 
 
 The Odyssey : John Ball : Trafalgar Square : 
 
 1886-1887 164 
 
 CHAPTER XVIII 
 
 Signs of Change : The Arts and Crafts : Return 
 
 to Romance: 1 888- 1 889 196 
 
vi CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 CHAPTER XIX 
 
 Passive Socialism : Foundation of the Kelmscott 
 
 Press: 1 8 90-1 891 . 230 
 
 CHAPTER XX 
 
 Printing, Romance-writing, Translation, and 
 Criticism : Final Attitude towards Art and 
 History: 1891-1893 ....... 267 
 
 CHAPTER XXI 
 
 Last Years : The Kelmscott Chaucer : 18 94- 18 96 299 
 
 CHAPTER XXII 
 
 Ilicet .............. 327 
 
 Index . . . . . . 353 
 
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 VOLUME II 
 
 TO FACT 
 PAGE 
 
 William Morris, set. 53. From a photograph by 
 F. Hollyer Frontispiece 
 
 The Mill Pond, with the Weaving and Printing 
 Sheds, Merton Abbey. From a drawing by 
 E. H. New 34 
 
 The Glass-painting Sheds, Merton Abbey, from 
 the Dye-house. From a drawing by E. H. 
 New 42 
 
 The Manor House, Kelmscott, from the Garden. 
 
 From a drawing by E. H. New . . . . 222 
 
 The Manor House, Kelmscott, from the Home- 
 mead. From a drawing by E. H. New . 350 
 
THE LIFE OF WILLIAM MORRIS 
 
 CHAPTER XII 
 
 LONDON AND KELMSCOTT I THEORIES OF ART AND LIFE 
 
 1879-1881 
 
 But work among his dye-pots and looms, interesting 
 and fascinating as he found it, could not fill up the whole 
 of his mind. In spite of the variable excitement and the 
 more settled rest of this daily work, voices from an outer 
 world kept calling him more and more imperiously. For 
 a time he tried to think that it was the voice of poetry 
 that was calling, but the fancy brought no real convi&ion. 
 "As to poetry," he writes in Odtober, 1879, CC I don't 
 know, and I don't know. The verse would come easy 
 enough if I had only a subje6l which would fill my heart 
 and mind : but to write verse for the sake of writing is 
 a crime in a man of my years and experience." He had 
 in faft produced his poetry : the instin&s of creation and 
 invention had to find new outlets ; and gradually the 
 fabric of social life itself became the field which, as he 
 had done with specific arts already, he tried to redeem 
 from commercialism and ugliness, and to reinstate on a 
 sounder basis. He recognized the gravity of the enter- 
 prise ; yet it did not then seem to him a desperate one. 
 " I have seen a many wonders, and have a good memory 
 for them ; and in spite of all grumblings have a hope 
 that civilized people will grow weary of their worst follies 
 
 II. B 
 
2 THE LIFE OF [1879 
 
 and try to live a less muddled and unreasonable life ; 
 not of course that we shall see much of that change in 
 the remnant that is left of our days." 
 
 In this hope, and for work at anything that might lead 
 towards its accomplishment, he was willing to give up 
 ease and leisure, and much of what made life desirable. 
 And one can trace the convidtion growing in him very 
 slowly, that towards forwarding the work some renun- 
 ciation was necessary — it might be, he thought with a 
 sudden pang, the giving up of Kelmscott. " I am sit- 
 ting now, 10 p.m.," he writes from there in late autumn, 
 Cf in the tapestry-room, the moon rising red through the 
 east-wind haze, and a cow lowing over the fields. I 
 have been feeling chastened by many thoughts, and the 
 beauty and quietness of the surroundings, which latter, 
 as I hinted, I am, as it were, beginning to take leave of. 
 That leave-taking will, I must confess, though you may 
 think it fantastic, seem a long step towards saying good- 
 night to the world." 
 
 His ease, his leisure, in effe<5t we may say his life, he 
 did give up for the sake of this hope : but the giving up 
 of Kelmscott was a pang that was spared to him. Nor 
 would it be right to think of him as habitually occupied 
 by these somewhat sombre broodings. When he did 
 throw off work, his enjoyment remained that of a child. 
 cf All right," runs a note of this year to Ellis arranging 
 for a couple of days' fishing, u I think that is best. I am 
 writing to Mrs. Comely to say positively that we will ; so 
 begone dull care : don't forget the worms." Another 
 letter gives a description of his arrival with Webb at 
 Kelmscott through the floods of that wet August. They 
 had been at Salisbury, and he had seen Stonehenge for 
 the first time. " I was much impressed by it," he wrote : 
 " though the earth and sky nearly met, and the rain poured 
 continuously, nothing could spoil the great stretches of 
 
jet. 46] WILLIAM MORRIS 
 
 3 
 
 the Plain, and the mysterious monument that nobody 
 knows anything about — except Fergusson who knows 
 less than nothing." From Amesbury they drove north 
 across the Wiltshire downs. 
 
 " We went right up the Avon valley, and very beautiful 
 it was ; then, as the river narrowed, we turned off to- 
 wards a little scrubby town called Pewsey that lies in 
 the valley between the Salisbury and the Marlborough 
 downs: it was all very fine and characteristic country, 
 especially where we had to climb the Marlborough downs 
 at a place that I remembered coming on as a boy with 
 wonder and pleasure : Oare Hill they call it. We got 
 early in the afternoon to Marlborough and walked out 
 to see the College,and so strolled away to the Devils Den, 
 and back in the dusk. The next morning we set out 
 early for Avebury, in weather at first much like the day 
 before ; however it cleared before we reached Silbury, 
 and was quite fine while we were thereabout for two 
 hours, after which we drove on towards Swindon, intend- 
 ing Lechlade and Kelmscott that evening. The downs 
 end at a village called Wroughton, and we could see a 
 large piece of England from the slope of it, Faringdon 
 clump not at all in the background. We got another trap 
 at Swindon, where they warned us that we should have 
 to go through the waters to get to Lechlade : we went 
 through Highworth, a queer old village on a hill, and 
 sure enough we could see waters out from thence, though 
 they turned out to be only from the little river Cole : at 
 Highworth we found that they were mending the bridge 
 into Lechlade town, and that it would be closed ; so at 
 Inglesham we had to turn aside to strike the road that 
 ^ads over St. John's Bridge : sure enough in a few yards 
 we were in deep water enough, right over the axies of 
 the wheels : the driver lost his presence of mind, not being 
 used to floods you see, and pretty nearly spilt us in the 
 
4 THE LIFE OF [1880 
 
 ditch, but we just saved the carriage, and after some 
 trouble got into the high road by Buscot Parsonage ; 
 though even there for some time the said road was also 
 a river : so over St. John's Bridge and safe to Kelmscott. 
 But opening the gate there, lo, the water all over the 
 little front garden : in short, I have never seen so high a 
 flood there : there was a smart shower when we got 
 in and then a bright clear evening: the next day was 
 bright and clear between strong showers with a stifF south- 
 west gale : of course we could do nothing but sail and 
 paddle about the floods." 
 
 During the following winter the manufafture of the 
 Hammersmith rugs and carpets went busily on at Kelms- 
 cott House. By May enough specimens had been suc- 
 cessfully produced to allow of a public exhibition of 
 them. The circular written by Morris and issued by 
 the firm on that occasion states the fads very clearly. 
 This new branch of the business was " an attempt to 
 make England independent of the East for carpets which 
 may claim to be considered works of art." 
 
 Cf We believe," the circular goes on, cC that the time 
 has come for some one or other to make that attempt, 
 unless the civilized world is prepared to do without the 
 art of Carpet-making at its best : for it is a lamentable 
 fadl that, just when we of the West are beginning to 
 understand and admire the art of the East, that art is 
 fading away, nor in any branch has the deterioration been 
 more marked than in Carpet-making. 
 
 fc All beauty of colour has now (and for long) dis- 
 appeared from the manufactures of the Levant — the once 
 harmonious and lovely Turkey Carpets. The traditions 
 of excellence of the Indian Carpets are only kept up by 
 a few tasteful and energetic providers in England with 
 infinite trouble and at a great expense, while the mass of 
 the goods are already inferior in many respedls to what 
 
jet. 47] WILLIAM MORRIS 5 
 
 can be turned out mechanically from the looms of Glas- 
 gow or Kidderminster. 
 
 cc As for Persia, the mother of this beautiful art, no- 
 thing could mark the contrast between the past and the 
 present clearer than the Carpets, doubtless picked for 
 excellence of manufacture, given to the South Kensing- 
 ton Museum by His Majesty the Schah, compared with 
 the rough work of the tribes done within the last hundred 
 years, which the Directors of the Museum have judi- 
 ciously hung near them. 
 
 " In short, the art of Carpet-making, in common with 
 the other special arts of the East, is either dead or dying 
 fast ; and it is clear to everyone that, whatever future is 
 in store for those countries where it once flourished, they 
 will, in time to come, receive all influence from, rather 
 than give any to, the West. 
 
 " It seems to us, therefore, that, for the future, we 
 people of the West must make our own hand-made 
 Carpets, if we are to have any worth the labour and 
 money such things cost ; and that these, while they 
 should equal the Eastern ones as nearly as may be in 
 materials and durability, should by no means imitate 
 them in design, but show themselves obviously to be 
 the outcome of modern and Western ideas, guided by 
 those principles that underlie all architectural art in 
 common." 
 
 Besides this labour of the loom, the year had been 
 crowded with other more public work. Sweeping re- 
 storations were proposed and already in progress at St. 
 Mark's, Venice ; and Morris was the soul of the move- 
 ment of protest, which, though conducted in some 
 quarters with more zeal than discretion in its attitude 
 towards Italy and the Italian Government, at least had a 
 powerful influence in preventing the proposed demolition 
 and rebuilding of the western facade. In support of the 
 
6 THE LIFE OF [1880 
 
 movement, which was headed by the Society for Protec- 
 tion of Ancient Buildings, he spoke and wrote untiringly, 
 not only in London, but in Birmingham and Oxford. 
 The Oxford meeting in the Sheldonian Theatre was the 
 first occasion on which he appeared at his own University 
 in any public capacity. In his ardour he even succeeded 
 in prevailing on Burne-Jones to make there, for the first 
 and last time on record, a speech in public. 
 
 When he had been at Venice the year before, he had 
 been too ill to take much apparent pleasure in St. Mark's. 
 But his eye had taken it all in, and the impression it 
 made on him rather grew than weakened as time went 
 on. cc Always beautiful," he now wrote of it, fC but from 
 the first meant to grow more beautiful by the lapse of 
 time, it has now become a work of art, a monument of 
 history^ and a piece of nature. Surely I need not enlarge 
 on the pre-eminence of St. Mark's in all these charadters ; 
 for no one who even pretends to care about art, history, 
 or nature, would call it in question ; but I will assert 
 that, strongly as I may have seemed to express myself, 
 my words but feebly represent the feelings of a large 
 body of cultivated men who will feel real grief at the 
 loss that seems imminent — a loss which may be slurred 
 over, but which will not be forgotten, and which will be 
 felt ever deeper as cultivation spreads. That the out- 
 ward asped: of the world should grow uglier day by day 
 in spite of the aspirations of civilization, nay, partly 
 because of its triumphs, is a grievous puzzle to some oi 
 us who are not lacking in sympathy for those aspirations 
 and triumphs, artists and craftsmen as we are. So griev- 
 ous it is that sometimes we are tempted to say, 4 Let 
 them make a clean sweep of it all then ; let us forget it 
 all and muddle on as best we may, unencumbered with 
 either history or hope ! 9 But such despair is, we well 
 know, a treason to the cause of civilization and the arts, 
 
jet. 47] WILLIAM MORRIS 
 
 7 
 
 and we do our best to overcome it, and to strengthen 
 ourselves in the belief that even a small minority will 
 at last be listened to and its reasonable opinions be 
 accepted." 
 
 He was also a regular visitor and adviser at the South 
 Kensington Museum and at the Royal School of Art 
 Needlework. And alongside of all the rest, he carried 
 on, until the General Election of 1880, vigorous political 
 work in London. In 1879 ^ e was treasur er of the 
 National Liberal League, an association formed to a large 
 extent from the representatives of that working-class 
 London Radicalism which had organized itself in opposi- 
 tion to the Eastern policy of the Government in 1876. 
 At the meetings of this League he made his first essays 
 in the pradice of extempore speech. It was a thing 
 which, partly from constitutional shyness and partly from 
 the pressure of thought behind his language, came to 
 him, so far as it did come at all, with great difficulty. 
 " When he spoke off-hand," a colleague of his at this 
 time notes — and the description is highly characteristic 
 — " he had a knack at times of hammering away at his 
 point until he had said exactly what he wanted to say in 
 exactly the words he wished to use, rocking to and fro 
 the while from one foot to the other." 
 
 After the elections of 1 8 80 had replaced a Liberal Gov- 
 ernment in power, his political partisanship rapidly fell 
 away from him. Like the wave of popular feeling which 
 turned those elections, it had been roused on particular 
 issues, and was kept alive rather by hostility to Lord 
 Beaconsfield's policy than by any great affedtion for the 
 Cabinet which replaced his. The enthusiasm of 1 8 80 barely 
 lived out the year. The Irish Coercion Bill of 1 8 8 1 finally 
 destroyed it. In the November following, Morris took an 
 actively joyful part in winding up the affairs of the Na- 
 tional Liberal League. The social reforms which he had 
 
8 THE LIFE OF [1880 
 
 at heart he saw disappearing amid an ocean of Whiggery, 
 which he no more loved than he did Toryism. "I think 
 some raison d'etre might be found for us," he wrote in 
 handing over the accounts when he resigned the treasurer- 
 ship, " if we had definite work to do : I do so hate — this 
 in spite of my accounts — everything vague in politics as 
 well as in art." But definite work of the kind he meant 
 was not then in the programme of the Liberal party. 
 Very soon Morris's attitude towards current politics be- 
 came one of mere irritation and contempt. c< Toryism, 
 a system of common robbery, is nevertheless far better 
 than Whiggism — a compound of petty larceny, popular 
 instruction, and receiving of stolen goods": so runs a 
 well-known passage in <c The Romany Rye"; and Morris's 
 way of regarding politics had much in common with 
 Borrow's. Gradually but inevitably he became one of a 
 party to whom Canning'sfamous phrase took a new mean- 
 ing; and who resolved, if it were possible, to call a new 
 world into existence, not to redress, but to destroy, that 
 balance of the old in which they saw nothing but a door 
 turning back and forward on its hinges. 
 
 Butthis changetooktime; and it was gradually wrought 
 out through many doubts and even despondencies. 
 
 In the summer of 1880 the long-planned voyage of 
 the whole family from Hammersmith to Kelmscott by 
 water adtually took place. Price, William De Morgan, 
 and the Hon. Richard Grosvenor were the remainder of 
 the party. All cares were put aside for it, and the light- 
 headedness of fifteen years before resumed its sway for a 
 happy week. 
 
 " Little things please little minds," he writes on the 
 10th of August; "therefore my mind must be little, so 
 pleased am I this morning. That is not logic, though 
 I susped the conclusion to be true : but again I doubt if 
 the c Ark/ which is veritably the name of our ship, can 
 
jet. 47] WILLIAM MORRIS 
 
 9 
 
 be considered a little thing, except relatively: item, it is 
 scarcely a little thing that the sky is one sheet of pale 
 warm blue, and that the earth is sucking up the sun re- 
 joicing. 
 
 " Jenny and I went out before breakfast to see the 
 craft. She is odd but delightful: imagine a biggish com- 
 pany boat with a small omnibus on board, fitted up luxuri- 
 ously inside with two shelves and a glass-rack, and a sort 
 of boot behind this: room for two rowers in front, and I 
 must say for not many more except in the cabin or omni- 
 bus. Still what joy (to a little mind) to see the landscape 
 out of a square pane of glass, and to sleep a-nights with 
 the stream rushing two inches past one's ear. Then 
 after all, there is the romance of the bank, and outside the 
 boat the world is wide : item, we can always hire a skiff 
 for some of the party to row in and stretch their muscles, 
 and in that way I propose to start this afternoon about 
 i\ after dining here. 
 
 cc Rathbone can't come, being too hard at work after 
 all ; so our males will consist of Crom, Dick, and Meorgan " 
 (this was a child's mispronunciation of De Morgan's 
 name) u besides self. Yesterday morning, also a very beau- 
 tiful one, I had qualms about leaving the garden here, 
 which really, as De Morgan said on Sunday, is a very 
 tolerable substitute for a garden : item, after doing a good 
 deal of small necessary work at Queen Square I had qualms 
 about leaving my business; but to-day I have none — I 
 think I know now why I fatten so." 
 
 ( <c I really think," he says, however, in another letter, 
 written when he was in much trouble and worry over 
 public work, " that FalstafFs view of sighing and grief 
 blowing men up like a bladder was a sound medical 
 opinion.") 
 
 cc More and more I think people ought to live in one 
 place — pilgrimages excepted. By the way, I give my 
 
io THE LIFE OF [1880 
 
 third lecture to the Trade Guild of Learning in Oftober ; 
 that will be my autumn work, writing it, if I have any 
 quiet time away from home. Also I have promised to 
 le&ure next March at the London Institute — subjed:, the 
 prospers of Architecture in modern civilization. I will 
 be as serious as I can over them, and when I have these 
 two last done, I think of making a book of the lot, as it 
 will be about what I have to say on the subjedt, which 
 still seems to me the most serious one that a man can think 
 of; for 'tis no less than the chances of a calm, dignified, 
 and therefore happy life for the mass of mankind. 
 
 " I shall find my long carpet out of the loom when I 
 come back — but I am not a bit anxious about it now, the 
 river will wash all that away." 
 
 The story of the expedition is continued in a long 
 letter from Kelmscott : 
 
 " We came to our first lodging (Sunbury, some six miles 
 above Hampton Court) very late, about half-past ten, 
 and queer it was the next morning to note how different 
 the place was to our imaginations of it in the dark : item, 
 the commonplace inn was a blow to the romance of the 
 river, as you may imagine. Crom and I slept on board 
 the Ark that night ; perforce. A cloudy morning 
 when we started, which at first much disappointed me after 
 the splendid evening we had come in by : nevertheless I 
 was in spirits at the idea of getting out of the Cockney 
 waters, and we were scarcely through the lock we had to 
 pass at starting before the sun was out and hot again: 
 the river was nearly new to me really hereabouts and 
 much better than I expe&ed, especially from Chertsey to 
 Staines ; it is full of strange chara&er in many places ; 
 Laleham,for instance, with its enormous willows and queer 
 suggestions (at any rate) of old houses on the banks: we 
 dined luxuriously on the bank a little below this, and had 
 tea on the grass of Runneymead, which (as I remembered) 
 
jet. 47] WILLIAM MORRIS 11 
 
 is a most lovely place ; on such an afternoon as one can 
 scarcely hope to see again for brightness and clearness. 
 When we had done tea, it became obvious that we should 
 never get to Maidenhead (as we had intended) that night, 
 so after much spilling of wisdom in a discussion of the 
 kind where no one can see any plan but his own as pos- 
 sible, we agreed to make another day of it ; Windsor on 
 that night ( Wednesday) and Marlow on Thursday. Well, 
 we got to Windsor about eight, and beautiful it was 
 coming into; and with all drawbacks even when one saw 
 it next morning seemed a wonderful place : so we only 
 made 17 miles this day. We all slept in the inn on the 
 waterside : that was Wednesday. 
 
 " Thursday, Dick took us up to Eton; and again in 
 spite of drawbacks it is yet a glorious place. Once more 
 the morning was grey and even threatening rain (wind N. 
 N.E.), but very soon cleared up again into the brightest 
 of days : a very pleasant morning we had, and dined just 
 above Bray Lock; cook was I, and shut up in the Ark 
 to do the job, appearing like the high-priest at the critical 
 moment pot in hand, — but O the wasps about that osier 
 bed ! We got quite used to them at last and by dint of 
 care did not swallow any with our food, nor were stung. 
 
 " There was a regatta at Maidenhead and both banks 
 crowded with spectators, so that we had to drop the 
 tow-rope before our time, and as the Ark forged slowly 
 along towards the Berkshire side with your servant steer- 
 ing on her roof, and De Morgan labouring at the sculls, 
 you may think that we were chaffed a little. After 
 Maidenhead you go under Cliefden woods, much admired 
 by the world in general ; I confess to thinking them 
 rather artificial; also eyeing Mr. Dick with reference to 
 their owner I couldn't help thinking of Mr. Twemlow 
 and Lord Snigsworthy. But at Cookham Lock how 
 beautiful it was: you get out of the Snigsworthy woods 
 
12 THE LIFE OF [1880 
 
 there; the hills fall back from the river, which is very 
 wide there, and you are in the real country, with cows and 
 sheep and farm-houses, the work-a-day world again and 
 not a lacquey's paradise: the country too has plenty of 
 character there, and may even be called beautiful : it was 
 beautiful enough that evening at any rate : the sun had 
 set as we cleared Cookham Lock, and we went facing the 
 west, which was cloudless and golden, till it got quite dark : 
 by that same dark we had to get through the Marlow 
 Lock, with no little trouble, as we had to skirt a huge 
 weir which roared so that we couldn't hear each other 
 speak, and so to our night's lodging : Crom and I in the 
 Ark close to the roaring weir, Dick and De M. in the 
 inn (a noisy one) and the ladies up town, over the bridge. 
 We took them there, and as we left the little house, looked 
 up the street, and saw the streamers of the Northern 
 Lights flickering all across that part of the sky, just as I 
 saw them in 9 7 1 (and not since) in the harbour of Thors- 
 haven: it was very mysterious and almost frightening to 
 see them over the summer leafage so unexpectedly in a 
 place I at least had not seen by daylight. 
 
 Cf So to bed we went, and again in the morning (Friday) 
 a grey day that cleared presently into a very hot one: and 
 once more the river all new to me, and very beautiful : at 
 Hurley Lock we had to wait for a big steamer that plies 
 regularly between Kingston and Oxford with passengers : 
 as I stood up in the lock afterwards I had the surprise of 
 seeing in a long barn-like building two Gothic arches and 
 then a Norman church fitting on to it and joined into a 
 quadrangle by other long roofs : this was Lady Place : 
 once a monastery, then a Jacobean house, and now there 
 is but a farm-house, somewhat gammoned, there : we all 
 went ashore and spent an hour there in great enjoyment, 
 for 'tis a lovely place : there is a huge dove-cot there with 
 carefully moulded buttresses of the 15th century: the 
 
jet. 47 J WILLIAM MORRIS 13 
 
 church has been miserably gammoned, but kept its old 
 outline. 
 
 cc I played the cook again a little short of Henley ; and 
 we went on again in a burning afternoon through a river 
 fuller and fuller of character as we got higher up: stuck 
 in the mud for 20 minutes at Wargrave : past Shiplake, 
 which is certainly one of the most beautiful parts of the 
 Thames, and so to Sonning for the night: a village pre- 
 pensely pidluresque and somewhat stuffy that hot night, 
 but really pretty, with a nice inn where Crom was at home, 
 having spent some time there when Boyce was painting 
 on the river : but we scattered all over the village and 
 Crom and I slept in the Ark. We started earlier on 
 Saturday, as we had to get to Wallingford, a longer run 
 than heretofore. We had got well used to the Ark by 
 now, and there was Janey lying down and working 
 quite at home : very hot and waspy it was at dinner, on 
 the bank between Pangbourne and Goring, but when we 
 were well past the last place the afternoon got much 
 clouded over for the first time since our start: but now 
 out of the over-rated half pidturesque reach of Streatley 
 and Goring here we were on the Thames that is the 
 Thames, amidst the down-like country and all Cockney - 
 dom left far behind, and it was jolly. 
 
 " We got to stuffy grubby little Wallingford rather 
 early, and got lodging in a riverside pothouse partly and 
 partly in the town. Here it rather tickled me that, an 
 hour or so being to spare before supper, the girls pro- 
 posed and did a row upon the water as a novel pastime. 
 That was Saturday: well, Sunday morning it had rained 
 in the night, and the look of the dull grey almost drizz- 
 ling morning made me expe6l a regular wet day; but it 
 was only dull and cool all day, and we had a very pleasant 
 day of it, and I cooked 'em their dinner just above Cul- 
 ham Lock ; we got out at Dorchester to look [at] the 
 
i 4 THE LIFE OF [1880 
 
 Dykes which Sir J. Lubbock has tried to get into the 
 schedule of his bill and failed ; so that the dykes have 
 been partly ploughed over to their hurt : then a bit higher 
 I recognized the place where we stopped for victuals years 
 ago when the Faulkners were with us : and so we got to 
 Oxford a little after nightfall : the banks of the river near 
 the town have been spoilt somewhat since my time ; for 
 I have been there but thrice since I was an undergraduate. 
 Well, at Oxford we left the Ark : and Janey the next 
 day (Monday) went on by rail to Kelmscott : while we 
 got up early and by dint of great exertions started from 
 Medley Lock at 9 a.m., with Bossom and another man 
 to tow us as far as New Bridge, where we sent them off, 
 and muddled ourselves home somehow, dining at a lovely 
 place about a mile above New Bridge, where I have 
 stopped twice before for that end. One thing was very 
 pleasant : they were hay-making on the flat flood-washed 
 spits of ground and islets all about Tadpole ; and the hay 
 was gathered on punts and the like; odd stuff to look at, 
 mostly sedge, but they told us it was the best of stuff for 
 milk. 
 
 cc Night fell on us long before we got to Radcot, and 
 we fastened a lantern to the prow of our boat, after we 
 had with much difficulty got our boats through Radcot 
 Bridge. Charles was waiting us with a lantern at our 
 bridge by the corner at 10 p.m., and presently the ancient 
 house had me in its arms again: J. had lighted up all 
 brilliantly, and sweet it all looked you may be sure/' 
 
 A few days later he writes from London to Mrs. Burne- 
 Jones : 
 
 " You may imagine that coming back to this beastly 
 congregation of smoke-dried swindlers and their slaves 
 (whom one hopes one day to make their rebels) under 
 the present circumstances does not make me much more 
 in love with London, though I must admit to feeling this 
 
jet. 47] WILLIAM MORRIS 
 
 15 
 
 morning a touch of the c all by oneself independence 
 which you wot of as a thing I like. I found by the way 
 De Morgan a complete sympathizer on the subje<5t of 
 London : however let that pass, since in London I am 
 and must be. The few days we passed at Kelmscott 
 made a fine time of it for me ; our mornings were grey 
 and dull, though we had several fine afternoons and two 
 Jovely evenings. Thursday we went to Fairford in the 
 afternoon, and I was pleased to see the glass and the hand- 
 some church once more. Though the country that way 
 is not remarkable, every turn in the road and every by- 
 way set me a-longing to go afoot through the country, 
 never stopping for a day ; after all a fine harvest time is 
 the crown of the year in England ; there is so much to 
 look at. On the Friday we went to Inglesham and above 
 the Round House, on what might be called the upperest 
 Thames, for half a mile, to look at Inglesham church, a 
 lovely little building about like Kelmscott in size and style, 
 but handsomer and with more old things left in it. Well, 
 we parted on Sunday morning rather melancholy, but had 
 a beautiful voyage to Medley Lock ; such an evening, and 
 the best of it at Godstow, where the moon began to show 
 red over Wolvercot. 
 
 <c So here I am again on the lower Thames, finding it 
 grimy; I have just been busy over my carpeteers; all going 
 pretty well. The c Orchard' being finished is a fair success 
 as manufacture — lies flat on the whole — and as a work of 
 art has points about it, but I can better it next time." 
 
 " I can't pretend," he writes again, when on the point 
 of leaving Kelmscott finally that autumn, c< not to feel 
 being out of this house and its surroundings as a great 
 loss. I have more than ever at my heart the importance 
 for people of living in beautiful places; I mean the sort of 
 beauty which would be attainable by all, if people could 
 but begin to long for it. I do most earnestly desire that 
 
1 6 THE LIFE OF [1881 
 
 something more startling could be done than mere con- 
 stant private grumbling and occasional public speaking 
 to lift the standard of revolt against the sordidness which 
 people are so stupid as to think necessary." 
 
 The river expedition was repeated in the following 
 year. William De Morgan and Faulkner again joined 
 in it. The party also included De Morgan's sister, and 
 two girls, Miss Bessie Macleod and Miss Lisa Stillman, 
 who came full of the high spirits of youth. f< On the 
 whole the hazardous experiment of trying the same ex- 
 pedition twice over has succeeded/* was Morris's report 
 after it was over. <f Our spirits sank somewhat I think 
 as we neared Kelmscott last night ; a thing done and over 
 always does that for people, however well it has gone. 
 For my part I didn't so much feel that as the coming in 
 to Oxford. A kind of terror always falls upon me as I 
 near it ; indignation at wanton or rash changes mingles 
 curiously in me with all that I remember that I have lost 
 since I was a lad and dwelling there ; not the least of 
 losses the recognition that I didn't know in those days 
 what a gain it was to be there. Perhaps if one dreads 
 repeating a pleasure at my time of life it is because it 
 marks too clearly how the time has gone since the last 
 time, and certainly I feel more than one year older since 
 I came up the water in 1880. At any rate the younger 
 part of us have enjoyed themselves thoroughly ; and in- 
 deed so have I. You know my faith, and how I feel I 
 have no sort of right to revenge myself for any of my 
 private troubles on the kind earth : and here I feel her 
 kindness very specially and am bound not to meet it with 
 a long face." 
 
 With a long face he did not meet it, whatever his pri- 
 vate troubles and perplexities might be. "According to 
 my recollection," Mr. William De Morgan says of these 
 voyages, <f we none of us stopped laughing all the way. 
 
jet. 48] WILLIAM MORRIS 17 
 
 The things that come out prominent in my recolle&ion 
 of the two journeys, just as they come, are : 1. Morris 
 sitting cooking the dinner inside the house-boat with the 
 window closed to keep the wind off the spirit lamp, and 
 ourselves outside looking at him through the glass. 
 2. The party sitting in a circle at dinner on the river- 
 bank, and Morris starting straight off with an Icelandic 
 or other story which kept us all quiet and well-behaved 
 till washing-up time. 3. Detection and convidtion by 
 Morris of the Thames Conservancy, which he was always 
 catching at some new misdemeanour. 4. A battle royal 
 at Henley at the hotel where we put up, about whether 
 Mrs. Harris was or was not an abstraction. It began 
 like this : we played Twenty Questions, and Mrs. Harris 
 was the subject to be guessed — I think by me, as I was 
 sent out of the room while the discussion proceeded how 
 my first question, c abstract or concrete ?' should be an- 
 swered. I remember being outside the door when the 
 waiter came up from the people in the room underneath 
 to know if anything was the matter. It was a warm dis- 
 cussion ; virtually between Charles Faulkner and Morris. 
 Faulkner maintained that Mrs. Harris was just as much 
 a concrete idea as any other character in fidlion. Morris 
 repudiated this indignantly, affirming that she wasn't even 
 a character in fiction, as she doesn't occur in the story 
 except as an invention of Mrs. Gamp, who is herself a 
 character in fiftion. It is a delicate question : I recoiled: 
 discussing it afterwards with Morris in the Merton Abbey 
 days, when I was putting down the foundations of my 
 building there — it was recalled to our minds by the con- 
 crete, naturally." 
 
 From Kelmscott he wrote on the 4th of September 
 after the second of these voyages: " It has been a great 
 pleasure to see man and maid so hard at work carrying 
 at last. Hobbs began at it on Wednesday morning, and 
 
 11. c 
 
18 
 
 THE LIFE OF 
 
 by the next morning the thatchers were putting on the 
 bright straw cap to the new rick : yesterday they were 
 carrying the wheat in the field along our causeway and 
 stacking it in our yard : pretty as one sat in the tapestry- 
 room to see the loads coming on between the stone walls 
 — that was for the other rick though, just beyond the 
 little three-cornered close in front of the house. I am 
 afraid that the last winter has killed us a great many 
 birds here ; small ones especially : I don't see the blue 
 tits I look for at this time of the year. I have seeri but 
 one moor-hen (yesterday) and was glad to see him, as I 
 feared they were all dead : plenty of rooks however ; 
 they have just left off making the parliament-noise they 
 began about six this morning : starlings also, but they 
 haven't begun to gather in our trees yet. 
 
 " The other morning as I was coming up the river by 
 our island I heard a great squealing of the swallows, and 
 looking up saw a hawk hanging in the wind overhead, 
 and the swallows gathered in a knot near him : presently 
 two or three swallows left their knot and began skirting 
 Mr. Hawk, and one swept right down on him and fetched 
 him a crack (or seemed to). He considered for a minute 
 or two, then set his wings slant-wise and went down the 
 wind like lightning, and in an instant was hanging over 
 Eaton Hastings : I remember seeing something like this 
 in the flats about the Arun before." 
 
 cc We went a most formal expedition on Saturday," 
 says a letter of a fortnight later. c< By water to Lechlade: 
 then took a trap there and drove to Cirencester, which 
 turned out a pleasant country town, and to us country 
 folk rather splendid and full of shops. There is a grand 
 church there, mostly late Gothic, of the very biggest type 
 of parish church, romantic to the last extent, with its many 
 aisles and chapels: wall-painting there and stained glass 
 and brasses also: and tacked on to it an elaborate house, 
 
jet, 48] WILLIAM MORRIS 19 
 
 now the town hall, but built doubtless for lodging the 
 priests who served the many altars in the church. I 
 could have spent a long day there ; however, after moon- 
 ing about the town a bit, we drove off again along the 
 long stretches of the Foss-way (Roman) over a regular 
 down country, the foot-hills of the Cotsvvolds, pleasant 
 enough, till we came to the valley which the tiny Coin 
 cuts through, where we set ourselves to seeking the Ro- 
 man villa: said valley very beautiful, the meadows so 
 sweet and wholesome. Two fields were grown all over 
 with the autumn crocus, which I have not seen wild else- 
 where in England, though there was plenty of it near 
 Ems. The Roman villa was very interesting, for a show 
 place with a gimcrack cottage ornee in front of it, and the 
 place was lovely : we spent our time with the utmost 
 recklessness, so that by then we had had tea at a nice little 
 public by a bridge, and were ready to start down the 
 Coin towards Fairford, it was 6.30, and getting towards 
 twilight. However we saw the first two villages well 
 enough and had some inkling of the others : the scale of 
 everything of the smallest, but so sweet, and unusual even ; 
 it was like the background of an innocent fairy story. We 
 didn't know our way till we had reached the last of the 
 Coin villages, and kept asking and knocking at cottage 
 doors and the like, and it was all very delightful and queer. 
 Our trap put us down at St. John's Bridge, and we trudged 
 thence into Kelmscott, on a night so dark that even 
 Kelmscott lights made a kind of flare in the sky." 
 
 It was in the strength of that autumn's stay at Kelms- 
 cott, and all the thoughts through which it led him, that 
 he reached a point to which he had not till then attained 
 in width of outlook and depth of insight. An address 
 delivered by him on the 13th of Odlober at the annual 
 meeting of the School of Science and Art connected with 
 the Wedgwood Institute at Burslem, though only pub- 
 
20 THE LIFE OF [1881 
 
 lished in a locally circulated report, and not at any time 
 very widely known, is both one of the most brilliant and 
 one of the most significant of his published writings. It 
 contains, in a way which none of his other published 
 ledures of that period seem to approach, the sum of all his 
 earlier and the germ of all his later dodlrine. 
 
 u I myself," he said in that address, cc am just fresh 
 from an out-of-the-way part of the country near the end 
 of the navigable Thames, where within a radius of five 
 miles are some half-dozen tiny village churches, every 
 one of which is a beautiful work of art. These are the 
 works of the Thames-side country bumpkins, as you 
 would call us — nothing grander than that. If the same 
 sort of people were to design and build them now, they 
 could not build anything better than the ordinary little 
 plain Nonconformist chapels that one sees scattered about 
 new neighbourhoods. That is what they correspond with, 
 not an archited-designed new Gothic church. The more 
 you study architecture the more certain you will become 
 that I am right in this, and that what we have left us of 
 earlier art was made by the unhelped people. Neither 
 will you fail to see that it was made intelligently and 
 with pleasure. 
 
 " That last word brings me to a point so important 
 that, at the risk of getting wearisome, I must add it to 
 my old sentence and repeat the whole. Time was when 
 everybody that made anything made a work of art besides 
 a useful piece of goods, and it gave them pleasure to make 
 it. Whatever I doubt, I have no doubt of that. 
 
 cc I know that in those days life was often rough and 
 evil enough, beset by violence, superstition, ignorance, 
 slavery ; yet sorely as poor folks needed a solace, they did 
 not altogether lack one, and that solace was pleasure in 
 their work. Much as the world has won since then, I 
 do not think it has won for all men such perfe& happi- 
 
jet. 48] WILLIAM MORRIS 
 
 21 
 
 ness that we can afford to cast aside any solace that nature 
 holds forth to us. Or must we for ever be casting out 
 one devil by another ? Shall we never make a push to 
 get rid of the whole pack of them at once ? 
 
 iC As I sit at my work at home, which is at Hammer- 
 smith, close to the ri ver, I often hear some of that ruffianism 
 go past the window of which a good deal has been said 
 in the papers of late, and has been said before at re- 
 curring periods. As I hear the yells and shrieks and 
 all the degradation cast on the glorious tongue of Shake- 
 speare and Milton, as I see the brutal reckless faces and 
 figures go past me, it rouses the recklessness and brutality 
 in me also, and fierce wrath takes possession of me, till I 
 remember, as I hope I mostly do, that it was my good 
 luck only of being born respectable and rich, that has 
 put me on this side of the window among delightful books 
 and lovely works of art, and not on the other side, in 
 the empty street, the drink-steeped liquor-shops, the 
 foul and degraded lodgings. I know by my own feelings 
 and desires what these men want, what would have saved 
 them from this lowest depth of savagery : employment 
 which would foster their self-respe<5i and win the praise 
 and sympathy of their fellows, and dwellings which they 
 could come to with pleasure, surroundings which would 
 soothe and elevate them ; reasonable labour, reasonable 
 rest. There is only one thing that can give them this — 
 art" 
 
 Two other passages from the same address are memor- 
 able. The first expresses with great lucidity and sym- 
 pathy the mixture of admiration and impatient despair 
 with which he regarded the work of the Pre-Raphaelite 
 school of painting as it culminated in the art of Burne- 
 Jones. 
 
 €t The work which is the result of the division of labour, 
 whatever else it can do, cannot produce art : which must, 
 
22 THE LIFE OF [1881 
 
 as long as the present system lasts, be entirely confined 
 to such works as are the work from beginning to end of 
 one man — pictures, independent sculpture, and the like. 
 As to these, on the one hand they cannot fill the gap 
 which the loss of popular art has made, nor can they, 
 especially the more imaginative of them, receive the sym- 
 pathy which should be their due. As things go, it is im- 
 possible for any one who is not highly educated to under- 
 stand the higher kind of pictures. The aspeft of this as 
 regards people in general is to my mind much more im- 
 portant than that which has to do with the unlucky artist: 
 but he also has some claim upon our consideration ; and 
 I am sure that this lack of the general sympathy of simple 
 people weighs very heavily on him, and makes his work 
 feverish and dreamy, or crabbed and perverse. ,, 
 
 The other passage is a piece of straightforward prac- 
 tical advice to designers. In the artist, and therefore in 
 his art, a certain moral quality was before all things 
 essential : the qualities fatal to art were not technical : 
 they were c< vagueness, hypocrisy, and cowardice. " And 
 of these three, vagueness was to Morris as immoral, and 
 therefore as inartistic, as either of the other vices. 
 
 <c Be careful to eschew all vagueness. It is better to 
 be caught out in going wrong when you have had a de- 
 finite purpose, than to shuffle and slur so that people 
 can't blame you because they don't know what you are 
 at. Hold fast to distind: form in art. Don't think too 
 much of style, but set yourself to get out of you what 
 you think beautiful, and express it, as cautiously as you 
 please, but, I repeat, quite distinctly and without vague- 
 ness. Always think your design out in your head before 
 you begin to get it on the paper. Don't begin by slob- 
 bering and messing about in the hope that something 
 may come out of it. You must see it before you can 
 draw it, whether the design be of your own invention or 
 
jet. 48] WILLIAM MORRIS 23 
 
 nature's. Remember always, form before colour, and 
 outline, silhouette, before modelling, not because these 
 latter are of less importance, but because they can't be 
 right if the first are wrong." 
 
 The progress of his mind towards active Socialism 
 during these two years is recorded in the private letters 
 where he set down his thoughts or his beliefs from one 
 day to another with complete transparency. Through 
 many fluctuations of mood one may trace a gradual 
 advance. Some people, even among those who knew 
 him well, thought of his Socialism as a sudden and un- 
 accountable aberration; or at all events fancied it a 
 movement into which he flung himself in a sudden fit of 
 enthusiasm, without having thought the matter out, and 
 acting on a rash impulse. How much this is the reverse 
 of the truth becomes plain when one traces the long 
 struggle, the deep brooding, through which he arrived at 
 his final attitude, and notes the distaste and reluctance 
 which he often felt for the new movement, which at 
 other moments shone out to him as the hope of the 
 world. 
 
 Cf I am in rather a discouraged mood," he writes in a 
 New Year's letter in 1880, <c and the whole thing seems 
 almost too tangled to see through and too heavy to move. 
 Happily though, I am not bound either to see through 
 it or move it but a very little way : meantime I do know 
 what I love and what I hate, and believe that neither the 
 love nor the hatred are matters of accident or whim." 
 Beyond all he seems to have been oppressed by a sense 
 of loneliness in his new thoughts. Any moral support 
 from whatever quarter was hailed by him with touching 
 gratitude. To misconstruction he had long been ac- 
 customed. " I have had a life of insults and sucking of 
 my brains," he once said, with no exaggeration of the 
 truth. A man of means and University education who 
 
24 THE LIFE OF [1881 
 
 deliberately kept a shop, a poet who chose to exercise 
 a handicraft, not as a gentleman amateur, but under 
 the ordinary conditions of handicraftsmen, was a figure 
 so unique as to be all but unintelligible. Sometimes, 
 though rarely, he turned upon his persecutors. iC It is a 
 real joy to find the game afoot," he breaks out a few 
 months later ; "that the thing is stirring in other people's 
 minds besides mine, the poetic upholsterer, as Sir Ed. 
 Beckett calls me, meaning (strange to say) an insult by 
 that harmless statement of fadt." 
 
 In another letter written on the New Year's Day of 
 1 8 8 1 he regards the matter with a greater sense of re- 
 sponsibility and a more pradlical seriousness. 
 
 " I have of late been somewhat melancholy (rather too 
 strong a word, but I don't know another), not so much so 
 as not to enjoy life in a way, but just so much as a man 
 of middle age who has met with rubs (though less than 
 his share of them) may sometimes be allowed to be. 
 When one is just so much subdued one is apt to turn 
 more specially from thinking of one's own affairs to more 
 worthy matters ; and my mind is very full of the great 
 change which I hope is slowly coming over the world, 
 and of which surely this new year will be one of the 
 landmarks. Though to me, as I suppose to you, every 
 day begins and ends a year, I was fain to catch hold of 
 ancient custom ; nor perhaps will you think it ceremoni- 
 ous or superstitious if I try to join thoughts with you 
 to-day in writing a word of hope for the new year, that 
 it may do a good turn of work toward the abasement of 
 the rich and the raising up of the poor, which is of all 
 things most to be longed for, till people can at last rub 
 out from their dictionaries altogether these dreadful 
 words rich and poor." 
 
 Six months later he speaks for the first time clearly 
 of the new day as a thing which (as in the Northern 
 
jet. 48] WILLIAM MORRIS 25 
 
 Mythology) can only arrive through some Night of the 
 Gods, and faces the thought that true civilization may 
 have to be reached through the destruction, and not the 
 transformation, of the existing order. 
 
 c< I suppose you have seen about the sentence on Hen- 
 Most and read Coleridge's most dastardly speech to him : 
 just think of the mixture of tyranny and hypocrisy with 
 which the world is governed ! These are the sort of 
 things that make thinking people so sick at heart that 
 they are driven from all interest in politics save revolu- 
 tionary politics : which I must say seems like to be my 
 case. Indeed I have long known, or felt, say, that 
 society in spite of its modern smoothness was founded 
 on injustice and kept together by cowardice and tyranny : 
 but the hope in me has been that matters would mend 
 gradually, till the last struggle, which must needs be 
 mingled with violence and madness, would be so short as 
 scarcely to count. But I must say matters like this and 
 people's apathy about them shake one's faith in gradual 
 progress. 
 
 <c As to the Anti-Scrape, I have little comfort there 1 
 must say: we have begun too late and our foes are too 
 many; videlicet, almost all people, educated and unedu- 
 cated. No, as to the buildings themselves, 'tis a lost 
 cause; in fadt the destruction is not far from being com- 
 plete already. What people really say to themselves is 
 this : I don't like the thing being done, but I can bear it 
 maybe — or certainly, when I come to think of it — and to 
 stir in it is such obvious suffering ; so I won't stir. Cer- 
 tainly to take that trouble in any degree it is needful that 
 a man should be touched with a real love of the earth, a 
 worship of it, no less ; and I think that as things go, that 
 is seldom felt except by very simple people, and by them, 
 as would be likely, dimly enough. You know the most 
 refined and cultured people, both those of the old re- 
 
26 THE LIFE OF [1881 
 
 ligions and these of the new vague ones, have a sort of 
 Manichean hatred of the world (I use the word in its 
 proper sense, the home of man). Such people must be 
 both the enemies of beauty and the slaves of necessity, 
 and true it is that they lead the world at present, and I 
 believe will do till all that is old is gone, and history has 
 become a book from which the pi<5tures have been torn. 
 Now if you ask me why I kick against the pricks in this 
 matter, all I can say is, first because I cannot help it, and 
 secondly because I am encouraged by a sort of faith that 
 something will come of it, some kind of culture of which 
 we know nothing at present/' 
 A month later he writes again : 
 
 " How people talk as if there were no wrongs of 
 society against all the poor devils it has driven demented 
 in one way or other ! Yet I don't wonder at rich men 
 trembling either: for it does seem as though a rising im- 
 patience against the injustice of society was in the air ; 
 and no wonder that the craziest heads, that feel this in- 
 justice most, breed schemes for setting it all right with a 
 stroke of lightning. There was a curious and thoughtful 
 letter from America in Tuesday night's Echo, the writer 
 of which seemed to have been struck by this thought as 
 to matters over there : quoth he, there is no resped for 
 people in authority there : every one knows that they are 
 there by virtue of a bargain struck by selfishness and 
 selfishness, (I quote his matter only,) and a sort of despair 
 besets people about it. All political change seems to me 
 useful now as making it possible to get the social one : I 
 don't mean to say that I myself make any wide distinc- 
 tion between political and social ; I am only using the 
 words in the common way." 
 
 And once more three weeks later : 
 
 cc I don't quite agree with you in condemning grum- 
 bling against follies and ills that oppress the world at large, 
 
jet. 48] WILLIAM MORRIS 27 
 
 even among friends ; for you see it is but now and then 
 that one has a chance of speaking about the thing in 
 public, and meantime one's heart is hot with it, and some 
 expression of it is like to quicken the flame even in those 
 that one loves and respecfts most, and it is good to feel 
 the air laden with the coming storm even as we go about 
 our daily work or while away time in light matters. To 
 do nothing but grumble and not to act — that is throwing 
 away one's life: but I don't think that words on our 
 cause that we have at heart do nothing but wound the air, 
 even when spoken among friends: 'tis at worst like the 
 music to which men go to battle. Of course if the thing 
 is done egotistically 'tis bad so far; but that again, how 
 to do it well or ill, is a matter of art like other things." 
 
 A matter of art like other things ! from this position 
 he strayed far, in the opinion of many of his perplexed 
 friends and jeering opponents, in the years when he was 
 an aftive worker for the Socialist cause: and certainly the 
 storm-laden air that he began to feel round him was 
 partly at least an atmosphere of his own creation : a mir- 
 age, a fool's paradise, it was freely called by those who, 
 if they ever strayed into a fool's paradise of their own, 
 would at all events never be lured towards it by any super- 
 flux of sympathy or any ardour of imagination. Yet to 
 look a little deeper, this atmosphere, imagined or created, 
 and created so far as really imagined, is just what art and 
 art alone gives ; and it is well to realize that mankind, if 
 they propose to do without such dreams as this, can buy 
 release from them only by the deliberate destruction of 
 art and renunciation of beauty. Whether the result 
 would be worth the price is a remote and rather abstradl 
 question ; the price is unpayable. 
 
 These last letters are from Kelmscott. The return to 
 London had its natural effecft of shaping more or less vague 
 broodings into matters of clear visible right and wrong. 
 
28 THE LIFE OF [1881 
 
 " As to my c symptoms 9 on being pitchforked into the 
 dirt and misery of the Centre of Intelligence/' he breaks 
 out on his return, " I must hold my peace about them, I 
 suppose : only in sober earnest I must ask you to believe 
 that they are not wholly selfish ; since I could, if I would, 
 more or less escape from this captivity, and would do so 
 if it were not for the cause." 
 
 The reference in the use of the word " symptoms " may 
 not be at once obvious. It is explained by another letter 
 written a few months before. He knew — or if he did not 
 know it was not for want of telling — that discontent with 
 the existing order of things might be traceable to some 
 merely physical cause, some pressure on the brain, some 
 disorder of the liver, some acrid humour in the blood, that 
 poisoned the springs of energy. His own temper was 
 naturally passionate, and his gouty habit, with all which 
 that involves when the subjedl is gathering up for an ill- 
 ness, did not, of course, tend to make him less irritable. 
 That in spite of this his temper sweetened with years was 
 due to an amount of self-control which it is very easy for 
 natures more phlegmatic or of more perfedl physical 
 balance to under-estimate. How sane, how full of ordin- 
 ary common sense his view of such things was, is illus- 
 trated by that other letter, one of his rare excursions into 
 literary criticism. Even here the criticism passes almost 
 at once, and almost insensibly, into the larger sphere of a 
 criticism of life. 
 
 cc Last night I took me a book and read Carlyle on 
 Mrs. Carlyle, having read his James Carlyle and Jeffrey 
 before. I think I never read anything that dispirited me 
 so much ; though read it through one must after having 
 once begun it. What is one to say of such outrageous 
 blues as this ? As to what he says about this, that, and 
 the other person now living, I can't see that he gives much 
 offence, I mean to say personally ; he is generally very 
 
jet. 48] WILLIAM MORRIS 29 
 
 unfair and narrow and whimsical about his likes and dis- 
 likes, but 'tis something in these days of hypocrisy that 
 he makes distinctions at all — only one wishes his distinc- 
 tions were something more than whims. But all that is 
 nothing to the ferocity of his gloom ; I confess I had no 
 idea of it till I read the book : and yet I find it difficult 
 to say that it ought not to have been printed, and I am 
 sure it ought not to have been garbled, as some folk think 
 it should. Only should it not have been called, The his- 
 tory of a great author's liver ? Not to mention symptoms 
 too much, I in a small way understand something of that: 
 to look upon your own natural work, which you have 
 chosen out of all the work of the world, with a sick dis- 
 gust, when you are not at it: to be sore and raw with 
 your friends, distrustful of them, antagonistic to them, 
 when you are not in their company : to want society and 
 to hate it when you've got it : — all these things are just 
 as much a part of the disease as physical squeamishness: 
 but you see, poor chap, he was so always bad that he 
 scarcely had a chance of finding that out. But mind you, 
 I don't believe he didn't enjoy writing his books more or 
 less, even c Frederick,' the dullest of them and the one he 
 groans over most. After all, my moral from it all is the 
 excellence of art, its truth, and its power of expression. 
 Set c Sartor Resartus ' by all this, and what a difference ! 
 
 " The story of the old father is touching in spite of its 
 clannishness (which perhaps is not so bad a thing ; holds 
 the world together somewhat). He really must have 
 been a good fellow not to have bullied his queer son. 
 Only they wouldn't have been the worse for a touch of 
 definite art up there ; even among those beautiful moun- 
 tains and moors." 
 
 But c< the cause," a term perhaps specifically used by 
 Morris for the first time in the letter quoted above, was 
 now shaping itself in his mind to something on which the 
 
3 o THE LIFE OF WILLIAM MORRIS [1881 
 
 whole of his life both as an artist and as a human being 
 converged : and it was in London, where he saw the 
 misery of the present most acute, that he also discerned, 
 or thought he discerned, some lifting on the horizon, and 
 some glimmer of future hope. To retreat from the 
 pressure of social problems into "a little Palace of Art of 
 one's own " (in the phrase of five and twenty years back) 
 was now as before possible — was more possible than ever 
 now, when his business as a manufacturer and decorator 
 was firmly established and capable of large expansion. 
 Just at this time he was carrying out decorations on a 
 large scale at St. James's Palace, which included the hang- 
 ing of theThrone and Reception rooms with specially de- 
 signed silk damask, the hand-painting of the ceilings and 
 cornices, and the designing of a special paper for hanging 
 the main staircase. This work was, of course, very widely 
 known ; and it had attradted not merely additional atten- 
 tion, but additional resped, to the unique quality of his 
 design and workmanship as a decorator. He had only to 
 accept ordinary commercial conditions and use them for 
 what they were worth, to become a wealthy man, who 
 might live where he chose, and surround himself with a 
 sort of barbed wire fence of beautiful objedls. This was 
 just what he would not do: nor would he consent to the 
 less distasteful compromise of giving up the conditions 
 of aftive production to settle down in quietness at his be- 
 loved Kelmscott. The actual problem of civilization, as 
 it was focussed and concentrated in the welter of London, 
 drew him towards it with an invincible attraction ; and 
 upon senses always acutely open, and a brain that never 
 ceased sounding among the bases of things, there fell with 
 ever increasing urgency the cry of a bewildered and un- 
 happy people — confusa sonus urbis et illatabile murmur. 
 
CHAPTER XIII 
 
 MERTON ABBEY 
 l88l 
 
 Ever since the days when Red House was to have been 
 made the centre of a little manufacturing community, the 
 idea of transferring the works of the firm to some place 
 out of London had been in Morris's mind ; and now not 
 only was his dislike of London greater than ever, but the 
 increasing scale and complexity of the business made mi- 
 gration more practically urgent. Weaving, dyeing and 
 cotton printing, the three new staples of the firm's work, 
 are all industries that require spacious workshops; for 
 dyeing and its subsidiary processes of bleaching, the 
 necessary air and water could only be had out of London 
 for anything beyond mere experimental work. But in 
 nearly every branch of the business there were difficulties 
 involved by want of proper premises. At every hand 
 something essential to the production of the finished goods 
 had to be procured or executed elsewhere : in some cases 
 the raw material could only be laboriously obtained from 
 Yorkshire manufacturers ; in others the designs made at 
 Queen Square had to be sent out to manufacturers for 
 execution. In neither case was it possible to secure the 
 same results as when the whole work was carried out by 
 men trained in Morris's own methods, and working under 
 his own eye. The least that was wanted was a single 
 place in which the business could be so far concentrated 
 that he could dye his own silks and cottons and wools, 
 
32 THE LIFE OF [1881 
 
 weave his own carpets and tapestries and brocades, print 
 his own chintzes, and put together his own painted 
 windows. When the separate counting house and show- 
 rooms in Oxford Street were set up, there was no in- 
 superable difficulty in the way of transferring the manu- 
 facturing part of the business from Queen Square and 
 Hammersmith to any centre that might be fixed upon. 
 
 To transfer the works to the neighbourhood of Kelms- 
 cott was an obvious and tempting solution, if the place 
 had not been so remote and so far from a railway. But 
 not many miles off lay that Cotswold country which in 
 the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries had been one 
 of the principal manufacturing centres of England, and 
 whose prosperity had only given way towards the end of 
 last century before northern water-power and the energy 
 of Yorkshire masters. The slopes and valleys of the 
 Cotswolds, where the Thames and its tributary rivers 
 break from the hills, are still thickly set with little towns 
 that were once thriving seats of commerce, and that still 
 retain in their decay the traces of older opulence. So 
 early as the autumn of 1878 the idea of resuscitating the 
 old local industry in one of these beautiful villages was in 
 Morris's mind. He had gone over from Kelmscott to 
 stay for a few days with Price at Broadway Tower. From 
 Broadway he and Price drove over on the 1st of Septem- 
 ber to the village of Blockley, near Chipping Campden. 
 The village stands high up in one of the lateral valleys, 
 looking down to the plain along which the Roman Foss- 
 way runs on its straight course northeastward. A stream 
 runs down the little valley and is gathered in ponds to 
 work several mills, once busily employed in turning out 
 silk yarn for the Coventry manufacturers. One after 
 another they had succumbed to altered conditions and 
 the fierce competition of more modern machinery: and 
 now they stood empty. The notices of the last reduction 
 
jet, 48] WILLIAM MORRIS 33 
 
 of wages made, before they had to give up the struggle 
 for life altogether, were still pasted on the workshop doors. 
 Morris fell in love with the place. An ideally beautiful 
 landscape; clean air and water in abundance; a railway 
 station within easy distance; skilled workmen still linger- 
 ing in the half-deserted village, and owners who would 
 have been glad to make easy terms for what was becom- 
 ing almost unsaleable property, seemed enough to counter- 
 balance the disadvantage of being nearly a hundred miles 
 from London and more remote still from other manu- 
 facturing centres. But to the less enthusiastic mind of his 
 manager the risks of the scheme seemed much too great; 
 and at last Morris reluctantly abandoned it. As time went 
 on, too, the feeling grew on him that, as a Londoner, he 
 ought to be loyal to London and do the best by her. 
 
 The neighbourhood of London was searched all round. 
 William De Morgan, who was about to set up pottery 
 works for the manufacture of his lustred tiles and majolica, 
 joined in the search, and it was agreed that both factories 
 should be placed together if possible. At the beginning 
 of 1 88 1 the matter became really pressing. c< We shall 
 have to take the chintzes ourselves before long," Morris 
 wrote to his wife on the 23rd of February, " and are now 
 really looking about for premises. Edgar went to look 
 at the print-works at Cray ford on Monday. They seemed 
 promising : how queer it would be if we were to set up 
 our work there again. By choice, if 'tis to be had, I had 
 rather get hold of some place on the Colne, say about 
 West Drayton : it would take no longer getting down 
 there, or not so long, as I am to Queen Square now." 
 
 On the 3rd of March, u W. De M. is all agog about 
 premises and has just heard of some at Hemel Hempstead 
 near St. Albans. Webb and Wardle are going on Satur- 
 day to walk up a stream that runs into Thames at Isle- 
 worth/' 
 
 II. D 
 
34 THE LIFE OF [1881 
 
 " I went with De Morgan to Crayford on Monday," 
 he writes to Mrs. Morris again a week later; cc the whole 
 country about seems much spoiled since we were there ; 
 but Crayford itself less than most places. However, it 
 wouldn't do : though the buildings were big and solid and 
 very cheap : for one thing the time of getting there is 
 unconscionable, over an hour — on the whole it wasn't to 
 be thought of. I saw Hall Place once more and it made 
 the stomach in me turn round with desire of an old house." 
 
 The place finally chosen was nearer London than any 
 of these. "On Monday/' he writes on the 17th of 
 March, cc De M. and I went to look at premises at Merton 
 in Surrey, whereof more hereafter : they seem as if they 
 would do, and if so, and we can get them, then am I for 
 evermore a bird of this world-without-end-for-everlasting 
 hole of a London." The premises were disused print- 
 works, on the high road from London to Epsom, just seven 
 miles from Charing Cross. They had originally been a 
 silk-weaving fadlory, started early in last century by some 
 of those Huguenot refugees who had settled in large 
 numbers in the neighbouring districts of Wandsworth and 
 Streatham. The river Wandle, clear and beautiful then, 
 and even now but little spoilt, runs through them, turning 
 a water wheel and supplying water of the special quality 
 required for madder-dyeing. This was one of the prime 
 requisites, and limited the choice of sites materially. " We 
 brought away bottles of water for analysis," Mr. De 
 Morgan says in describing the various searches after the 
 desired fa&ory, cc to make sure that it was fit to dye with. 
 1 recoiled Morris's delight when a certificate was sent from 
 an eminent analyst to the effeft that a sample taken from 
 pipes supplying all Lambeth was totally unfit for con- 
 sumption and could only result in prompt zymotic disease : 
 c There 's your science for you, De Morgan ! ' said Morris. 
 I explained that if the analyst had known that 250,000 
 
THE MILL POND, WITH THE WEAVING AND PRINTING SHEDS, 
 MERTON ABBEY. 
 
iET. 48] WILLIAM MORRIS 35 
 
 people drank the water daily he would have analyzed it 
 different. This was in Battersea and never came to any- 
 thing." 
 
 The works stood on about seven acres of ground, in- 
 cluding a large meadow as well as an orchard and veget- 
 able garden. They were old-fashioned, though still in 
 good repair. The riverside and the mill pond are 
 thickly set with willows and large poplars ; behind the 
 dwelling-house a flower garden, then negledted, but soon 
 restored to beauty when it came into Morris's hands, runs 
 down to the water. The workshops, for the most part 
 long wooden two-storied sheds, red-tiled and weather- 
 boarded, are grouped irregularly round the mill lade. 
 Beyond the meadow are the remains of a mediaeval wall, 
 the sole remaining fragment of Merton Abbey. Within 
 a stone's throw Nelson had lived with the Hamiltons for 
 the two years which followed the peace of Amiens, until 
 he went out to the Mediterranean as Commander-in- 
 Chief in 1803. But his house had been pulled down 
 many years before. One drawback to the place was its 
 extreme inaccessibility, considering the smallness of the 
 distance, from Morris's house at Hammersmith, or indeed 
 from almost any part of London. The District Railway 
 was not then extended either to Wimbledon or to Turn- 
 ham Green. To reach Merton from Kelmscott House 
 Morris had to go by the underground railway from 
 Hammersmith to Farringdon Street, cross the City, and 
 then go down to Merton from Ludgate Hill, a journey 
 that took about two hours. He could, however, stay the 
 night at Merton when there was much to be done. A 
 couple of rooms were fitted up for his private use as at 
 Queen Square : " Papa will have a delightful sort of Quilp 
 establishment there," his daughter wrote when the move 
 was being made. 
 
 On the 8th of April he notes that he had Cf pretty much 
 
3 6 THE LIFE OF [1881 
 
 come to the conclusion " with the owners. But there were 
 the usual delays and hagglings : it was desired to have 
 power to build kilns for tiles and glass, so that covenants 
 with regard to chimneys had to be drawn up : and the lease 
 was only signed on the 7th of June. The next day he 
 went down with Webb, De Morgan, and George Wardle, 
 and the alterations began to be arranged. Morris would 
 not pull down any of the picturesque and prettily- 
 weathered workshops ; but roofs had to be heightened to 
 give free space for looms, and foundations trenched and 
 puddled to keep out damp (for at Merton water lies four 
 feet below the surface of the ground), besides the heavy 
 work of furnishing, the building of carpet-looms, the 
 digging and lining of pits for indigo vats, and the general 
 adaptation of both buildings and grounds to their new 
 uses. One of the first things he did when the season 
 allowed was to plant poplars round the meadow on which 
 the grounds of the calico prints were to be cleared by 
 exposure to the air. Meanwhile he was designing for 
 chintzes with extraordinary rapidity and success ; a whole 
 series of these designs, including many of his very best, 
 were turned out during this summer to be ready for the 
 new works to start upon. The move was made at the 
 beginning of winter. His impatience at the inevitable 
 delays was great. " I am in an agony of muddle," he 
 writes early in November ; " I now blame myself severely 
 for not having my way and settling at Blockley; I knew 
 I was right ; but cowardice prevailed." The agony, Mr. 
 George Wardle tells me, was merely because everything 
 could not move as easily and quickly as he wished. He 
 <c could never imagine difficulties," and chose to think 
 that everything would have gone smoothly at Blockley. 
 But before Christmas everything had been cleared out 
 from Queen Square and its annexes, and the new works 
 were fairly set a-going. 
 
jet, 4^1 WILLIAM MORRIS 37 
 
 A circular issued from Oxford Street when the Merton 
 workshops were in complete order gives a full catalogue 
 of all the kinds of work designed and executed there. 
 The list is as follows : 
 
 1 . Painted glass windows. 
 
 2. Arras tapestry woven in the high-warp loom. 
 
 3. Carpets. 
 
 4. Embroidery, 
 
 5. Tiles. 
 
 6. Furniture. 
 
 7. General house decorations. 
 
 8. Printed cotton goods. 
 
 9. Paper hangings. 
 
 10. Figured woven stuffs. 
 
 1 1 . Furniture velvets and cloths. 
 
 12. Upholstery. 
 
 Under some of these headings there are notes of a kind 
 very unlike the usual contents of a manufacturer's cata- 
 logue : and the circular may form the text for a brief 
 summary of Morris's methods, and of the personal share 
 he took in the various branches of the work. 
 
 In the earlier years of the business Morris had accepted 
 commissions for windows in old as well as new buildings : 
 the most conspicuous instances being the well-known 
 windows in the Latin Chapel at Christ Church, Oxford, 
 and the southern choir-aisle of Salisbury Cathedral. When 
 the Society for Protection of Ancient Buildings was 
 founded, he was forced to reconsider the whole question 
 of dealing with old churches more deeply than before ; 
 and the conclusions he drew with regard to the pradtice 
 of restoration obliged him to take up a very stringent 
 attitude when there was any question of alterations to an 
 ancient building. As regards windows in particular, the 
 casuistry of the matter is exceptionally delicate. " We 
 
38 THE LIFE OF [1881 
 
 are prepared as heretofore/' Morris wrote in this circular, 
 <c to give estimates for windows in churches and other 
 buildings, except in the case of such as can be considered 
 monuments of Ancient Art, the glazing of which we can- 
 not conscientiously undertake, as our doing so would 
 seem to sanction the disastrous pra&ice of so-called 
 Restoration." The double ambiguity of the words in 
 which the exception is couched is easily apparent. Even 
 rules laid down with the utmost stringency must in some 
 cases leave room for ambiguities and evasions, and the 
 final decision will fall on the instind of the artist. But 
 Morris's principles prescribed that in all cases where 
 there was any doubt, an existing building, or any part 
 of an existing building, whether in stri6t terms a monu- 
 ment of ancient art or not, should be let alone. In most 
 cases there was none. When Dean Stanley asked him 
 to execute a window for Westminster Abbey, and upon 
 his refusal, cited the Vyner window in Christ Church as 
 a precedent, Morris replied that even that window, the 
 excellence of which as a piece of modern work he did 
 not affeft to deny, was an intruder where it stood, and 
 alien in chara&er and sentiment from the building in 
 which it was placed. 
 
 On the announcement now made and on Morris's 
 own pradlice under it, Mr. Wardle makes some interesting 
 remarks. " Its objed was ill understood," he says, " and 
 moreover so little liked, that we found it necessary to 
 repeat orally and with asseverations our firm intention 
 to abide by it, and at the back of this, to get it believed 
 that we had not given up glass-painting altogether. For 
 a year or two certainly our business suffered from the 
 rumour, not wanting in echoes, that Mr. Morris had 
 given up glass-painting ; and we had to make many 
 advertisements to the contrary." 
 
 cc In the minds of most people,'' Mr. Wardle goes on, 
 
jet. 4 8] WILLIAM MORRIS 
 
 39 
 
 and here he touches the real truth of the matter, " who 
 took any interest at all in Mr. Morris's work, the raison 
 d'etre of c Morris glass' was its so-called medievalism, 
 and it was supposed nothing could be more suitable for 
 an ancient building. The profound misconception which 
 this opinion implied, and the other hopeless mistake 
 which assumed that Mr. Morris's work was purposely 
 * mediaeval/ made it impossible that the circular could be 
 understood. 
 
 cc The grounds of Mr. Morris's protest were two. The 
 first was the obvious material damage ancient buildings 
 suffer by the process of removing existing glass from 
 the windows and the insertion of new. We had our- 
 selves several frightful experiences, though we used 
 every precaution in our power : how much damage has 
 been done where no such care was taken, and where it 
 was not even suspedted that the original tracery and 
 framing of a window was of any peculiar value ! It was 
 not uncommon, when a painted window was offered to 
 an old church, that as part of the improvement new 
 tracery and mullions were also decided on. Even when 
 it was intended to preserve the old stonework, it was 
 almost inevitable that some part of it would fall when 
 the support of the ancient glass with its saddle- bars and 
 stanchions was removed : and new stonework would then 
 have to be prepared hastily. Even if all went well, 
 which would be a large concession — for there was always 
 the cutting of the old stonework for the new saddle-bars, 
 the hammering, and the vibration, most dangerous to 
 old masonry — there was the final blotting out of the 
 entire window by the wire guards. These guards are 
 almost equivalent to the abolition of the windows as part 
 of the external architecture, since they hide much of the 
 thickness of the masonry and all the refinements of the 
 mouldings and tracery." 
 
40 THE LIFE OF [1881 
 
 The other ground was that laid down with a firm hand 
 by Morris himself in the original statement of the ob- 
 jects of the Society for Protection of Ancient Buildings, 
 and continually impressed and re-impressed by him with 
 tongue and pen whenever he dealt with the subject of 
 ancient art : the essential dishonesty of any process which 
 professed to be tc restoration" of the old building; and the 
 essential futility of anything which undertook to replace 
 an original by a copy even when there was not the dis- 
 honest purpose of making the copy indistinguishable 
 from the original. 
 
 "Never," Mr. Wardle justly adds — and the remark, 
 of course, applies with equal force to the share which 
 Burne-Jones, first as principal and afterwards as sole 
 figure-designer, had in Morris windows — cc let people 
 say what they will about the suitability of Mr. Morris's 
 glass to mediaeval buildings, do the old and the new 
 rightly harmonize. This last opinion very few were 
 able to adopt, for so few recognized the real originality 
 and modernness of his art. It was supposed to be 
 mediaeval. In popular estimation design necessarily takes 
 one of several recognized forms which are called styles, 
 and as his design had many of the characters of mediaeval 
 work, he was supposed to be intentionally imitating that 
 style. On the contrary, Mr. Morris was too unaffected, 
 and in the broadest sense natural, in his art to allow him- 
 self to imitate, and as he did not intentionally make his 
 work mediaeval, he did not pretend that it could be suit- 
 able for a mediaeval building." 
 
 This, then, was Morris's theory, expressed in its rigour. 
 In accordance with it he laid down a self-denying ordin- 
 ance with regard to supplying painted windows for 
 ancient buildings — self-denying doubly, because not only 
 did this resolution, as has been noted above, injure, and 
 for a time partly cripple, this branch of the business, but 
 
iET. 48] WILLIAM MORRIS 41 
 
 because the result in three cases out of four was simply 
 that the owners, or guardians, of the mediaeval building 
 went somewhere else ; and the window was filled with 
 glass as much inferior to his in colour and design as it 
 was more alien from the spirit of the Middle Ages, not 
 least so when it was inspired by an insincere and pre- 
 tentious mediaevalism. 
 
 By abstaining himself, however, he hoped to set an ex- 
 ample that others might gradually follow; and perhaps 
 his a&ion has not been wholly without effe6t. In a few 
 instances he allowed exceptions : among these may be 
 mentioned the five beautiful windows executed by him for 
 the chancel of St. Margaret's, Rottingdean, at the special 
 request of Burne- Jones. In that case the windows were 
 plain lancets filled with modern glass, some of it un- 
 painted, the rest admittedly and unrelievedly hideous. 
 There was no tracery to injure, and no existing ancient 
 glass to suffer from the juxtaposition of the new. 
 
 As regards the personal part which Morris took in this 
 branch of the firm's work, it was the invariable practice 
 in early years, and remained the rule after the Merton 
 Abbey works were started, that the interpretation of the 
 design and the choice of the glass came under his own 
 eye. He seldom at any time, and never in more recent 
 years, made complete designs for windows himself. From 
 the first, the figure-subjedts were mainly supplied by those 
 of his colleagues who were professional painters. As time 
 went on, they came almost exclusively from the studio of 
 Burne-Jones, who supplied no cartoons for glass except 
 to the firm. But backgrounds and foliage were, as a rule, 
 of Morris's designing, the animals and certain kinds of 
 ornament being often drawn by Webb. 
 
 Morris never made his own glass. He often regretted 
 that he did not ; but for organizing this manufadlure, 
 time and money alike were required beyond what he could 
 
42 THE LIFE OF [1881 
 
 spare. There is little doubt that in the colouring of glass, 
 as in that of yarns,his personal touch would haveproduced 
 greater splendours of tone than could be got by other 
 workers. As it was, his faultless eye for colour had to 
 content itself with doing its best out of the glass supplied 
 by the ordinary manufacturers. If the colour of a Morris 
 window is to the present day unmistakable among all 
 rivals or imitations, this is not from any difference in 
 material, but from the skill in selection and variation 
 which was an instind: in Morris himself, and which to 
 some considerable degree he transmitted to his workmen. 
 
 When the cartoons for a window had been drawn, Mr. 
 Wardle notes in speaking of the pradice of this period, 
 Morris personally <c coloured " the window; that is to 
 say, he dictated in detail to Campfield, the foreman of 
 the painters, what glass was to be used for each part. 
 The various parts were then distributed to the painters, 
 whose work he watched as it went on, though he usually 
 reserved any comments till the painter had done all that 
 he could. Retouches were then made by his direction, 
 and the glass was burned and leaded up. When this was 
 done, there came the final review of the window, a work 
 of great difficulty in any case, and to any ordinary eye 
 impossible in the cramped premises in Queen Square, 
 where some of his largest windows were made. But here 
 his amazing eye and memory for colour enabled him to 
 achieve the impossible : he could pass all the parts of a 
 large window one by one before the light, and never lose 
 sight of the general tone of the colour or of the relation 
 of one part to another. If any part did not satisfy him, 
 new glass was cut and that piece of the window done 
 again. 
 
 The painting of tiles, which had been one of the first 
 occupations of the firm in Red Lion Square, had by this 
 time almost ceased. It had ceased wholly as regards 
 
THE GLASS-PAINTING SHEDS, MERTON ABBEY, FROM THE DYE-HOUSE. 
 
jet. 48] WILLIAM MORRIS 
 
 43 
 
 figure-painted tiles, of which a few sets of great beauty, 
 some of them with verses by Morris also painted on them, 
 had been made for a few years and not in great numbers. 
 Pattern tiles, chiefly meant for use in fireplaces, went on 
 being produced — as they still are — to a limited extent 
 from the early designs. They were all hand-painted, even 
 when the designs were very simple, the touch of the 
 brush being essential towards giving that quality of pat- 
 tern and surface that made them coherent with the larger 
 decoration of which they formed a part. The manufac- 
 ture of tiles on a larger scale and with properly con- 
 structed kilns had been taken up by De Morgan as a 
 branch of pottery, and it was not necessary that Morris 
 should continue to make his own. Since the premises in 
 Queen Square were abandoned, the firing of both glass 
 and tiles has been executed elsewhere, no kilns having 
 been built at Merton. The premises which De Morgan 
 took in order to establish potteries close to the Merton 
 Abbey works did not prove suitable to their purpose, 
 and the plan of joint, or even contiguous, factories never 
 fully took effeCt: but he afterwards set up works in 
 Chelsea from which tiles were supplied well suited to 
 take their place amonp; Morris decorations. It may be 
 added that, while the firm never either designed or made 
 pottery of any kind— the tiles used for painting on being 
 got from outside, chiefly from Holland — they did some- 
 thing towards introducing in England the knowledge of 
 some of the best varieties of foreign manufacture, especi- 
 ally the simple and beautiful Gres de Flandre ware, now 
 so common in the shops of London furnishers, which 
 made its first appearance in England, except as a curiosity, 
 in Morris's show-room. Neither did the production of 
 furniture play any important part in the firm's business. 
 There were generally a few pieces, nearly all from Webb's 
 designs, being made; but Morris never designed any 
 
4+ THE LIFE OF [1881 
 
 himself: it was only when some piece, such as a chest or 
 cupboard, was to be further adorned with gilding or 
 painting, that it came into his hands. Of all the specific 
 minor improvements in common household objefts due 
 to Morris, the rush-bottomed Sussex chair perhaps takes 
 the first place. It was not his own invention, but was 
 copied, with trifling improvements, from an old chair of 
 village manufacture picked up in Sussex by Mr. Warring- 
 ton Taylor. With or without modification it has been 
 taken up by all the modern furniture manufacturers, and 
 is in almost universal use. But the Morris pattern of the 
 later type (there were two) still excels all others in sim- 
 plicity and elegance of proportion. 
 
 The beginnings of the important industry of carpet- 
 weaving have already been recounted. Looms had already 
 been built at Hammersmith for weaving carpets of con- 
 siderable size, as much as twelve feet across. The great 
 loom at the Merton works is built for making a carpet of 
 no less than twenty-five feet in breadth. The designing of 
 these carpets was wholly, or almost wholly, done by Morris 
 himself. His praftice was first to make a drawing on the 
 scale of about one-eighth of the full size, which he coloured 
 very carefully with his own hand. A draughtsman en- 
 larged this coloured drawing on the "point paper" — 
 paper, that is, divided into minute spaces, each represent- 
 ing a single knot of the carpet. The pointing on this 
 paper, a work of immense laboriousness, was done by 
 Morris himself until he gradually trained other workmen 
 to do it with the accurate judgment which makes all the 
 difference between the right and wrong expression of the 
 design. The same laborious work was undertaken by 
 him in the designing of silk damasks, woven tapestries, 
 and all the patterned woven stuffs produced on his looms. 
 
 Beyond the preliminary tasks of designing and point- 
 ing, the acftual work at the loom performed by Morris 
 
^et. 4 8] WILLIAM MORRIS 
 
 45 
 
 remained for some years very great : and it became still 
 greater when he set aside the carpet-loom for the tapestry - 
 loom, upon which he revived the splendid and almost 
 extind art of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. In 
 a diary of his daily occupations which he kept in the year 
 of the removal to Merton, the entries of morning work 
 at the tapestry-loom are continual. As early in the year 
 as the 1 2th of March he puts down " up at 7.30, about 
 four hours tapestry": a week later, "up at four hours 
 tapestry " ; and as the mornings lengthened in April, 
 "up at 6, two hours tapestry," 44 up at 5.30, three hours 
 tapestry." All through the summer the entries go on: 
 he was seldom up later than six o'clock for several 
 months, and would be at the loom within ten minutes. 
 One day, at the end of May, 41 wind W.S. W., very fine 
 bright day, cool in evening " (for if Morris kept any 
 diary at all, however scanty, the weather was always the 
 first thing noted in it), the entry is 44 Up at 5 : 3-^ hours 
 tapestry. To Grange. To Queen Square : The green 
 for Peacock " (a woven hanging) cc all wrong. Did day 
 books and Friday" (the summing up of the week's busi- 
 ness and signing cheques) " besides seeing to this : took 
 away model of G. H. carpet from K. Meeting St. Mark's 
 Committee. Dined A. Ionides." And this was hardly an 
 exceptional day, so crowded was his life with occupation. 
 
 The carpet he was making for Mr. George Howard, 
 for the drawing-room at Naworth Castle, which is men- 
 tioned in this extract, was by far the largest that he had 
 then executed. It was nearly a year in hand, and the 
 hours he spent in designing and pointing it make up the 
 equivalent of a substantial day's work for a full month. 
 The result of a piece of work of this size and intricacy 
 remained an unknown quantity till the end. "Your 
 carpet has been finished," he wrote to Mr. Howard on 
 the 3rd of November, 41 for a week or two : I have been 
 
46 THE LIFE OF [1881 
 
 keeping it back to try for a fine day to spread it on our 
 lawn, so that I might see it all at once : at present I have 
 only been able to see it piecemeal. So seen, it looks very 
 well, I think, and seems to be satisfactory as to manu- 
 facture. What are your orders about it ? as I shall have 
 to send some one down to Naworth to get it into its 
 place : it weighs about a ton I fancy 
 
 The manufacture of Arras tapestry, on which Morris 
 had been experimenting at Hammersmith throughout the 
 year, was only fairly begun after the works were re- 
 moved to Merton. The first piece made there was a 
 frieze of greenery with birds, which, like the carpet of 
 the previous year, went to Naworth. In reviving this 
 noble art he had nothing in England to guide him, as 
 to the mechanical part of the work, beyond drawings of 
 looms in old books. To see what the mechanism was 
 really like, he had to pay a visit to the Gobelins, where 
 he found the ancient loom still in use, though sunk to 
 the servile task of making copies of oil paintings. The 
 low-warp loom, which had replaced it elsewhere, he at 
 once dismissed as useless for his purpose. In it the task 
 of the weaver is confined to copying the imperfedtly seen 
 cartoon stretched under the warp, at which he peers be- 
 tween the threads. The work is almost purely mechanical ; 
 the face of the tapestry being below, and the weaving done 
 from the back, the workman has no means of knowing 
 what effedt he is producing, and can only trust to a rigid 
 method. The making of tapestry on the high-warp 
 loom approximates in method to the painting of a pic- 
 ture ; the artificer produces his form and colour, stitch by 
 stitch, by the exercise of his own intelligence, and sees, 
 in his little swinging mirror, the adtual surface forming 
 itself insensibly under his hand, as if it were a picture on 
 the easel. 
 
 When months of daily pradtice had familiarized Morris 
 
mt. 48] WILLIAM MORRIS 47 
 
 himself with the processes and difficulties of tapestry- 
 weaving, the next thing was to teach the art to other work- 
 men. The work is of a kind which experience proves to 
 be best done by boys. It involves little muscular effort, 
 and is best carried on by small flexible fingers. " He 
 had another loom built at Queen Square," Mr. Wardle 
 tells me, u where he taught what he knew to William 
 Dearie, who was then a boy willing to adapt himself to 
 anything which gave him a chance of employment. Dearie 
 got on so well that very soon we took in two other boys, 
 Sleath and Knight, as his apprentices. When we moved 
 to Merton therefore we had already three c hands ' fairly 
 competent in this art. The first piece Dearie accom- 
 plished was the Goose-Girl, designed by Walter Crane ; 
 this was begun, and finished, I think, at Queen Square." 
 
 " At Merton," Mr. Wardle adds, " the boys, who were 
 still young, lived in the house. We gave them board and 
 lodging and a certain weekly stipend. It is worth while 
 to note that there was no sort of seleftion of these boys, 
 or of any others who were brought up by us to one or 
 other branch of Mr. Morris's business. John Smith, 
 who is now the dyer at Merton, was taken into the dye- 
 shop because it was just being set up at the time he was 
 getting too old to remain errand boy. Dearie was put 
 to the tapestry because that business then wanted an ap- 
 prentice ; and so of the other two. They were put to 
 the loom because at the time we were starting this we 
 were asked to do something for them. We took Sleath 
 on that ground first of all, and he introduced Knight. The 
 same rule applied to all others, and its working justified 
 Mr. Morris's contention that the universal modern 
 system, which he called that of Devil take the hind- 
 most, is frightfully wasteful of human intelligence. A 
 few years later, when we were able to set up a third tapes- 
 try-loom, we found a lad with equal facility, without 
 
48 THE LIFE OF [1881 
 
 seledtion of any kind, the nephew of the housekeeper at 
 Merton. She happened to tell me, at the time we were 
 getting the new loom ready, that her nephew had left 
 school and was looking for something to do." 
 
 This system of setting the nearest person to do what- 
 ever kind of work wanted doing was really of the essence 
 of Morris's method as a manufadturer from the beginning; 
 and in his hands it produced surprisingly good results. 
 How it would have worked, whether indeed it would 
 have worked at all, with a man of less genius at the head 
 of the work as a directing and propelling force, is of 
 course a different question. But, as Morris always in- 
 sisted, it would have worked just as well, and with much 
 greater certainty, if instead of the solitary man of genius 
 at the head of the work, there had been a living inherited 
 tradition throughout the workshop. The skilled work- 
 man is not as a rule a workman who possesses any re- 
 markable innate skill of hand. He is one rather whose 
 general intelligence has protected him against that exces- 
 sive division of labour which cramps and sterilizes the 
 modern artificer. If a rational latitude were given to 
 manual work of the individual under proper guidance, 
 it might well be that the average skill of hand and eye, 
 stimulated and not repressed by its daily labour, would 
 of its own self rise to a level which at present is only 
 reached in isolated instances. On this point the evid- 
 ence given by Morris himself in March, 1882, before the 
 Royal Commission on Technical Instruction, indicates 
 his view with great clearness and precision. <c I often 
 have great difficulty," he said, " in dealing with the work- 
 men I employ in London, because of their general ignor- 
 ance" This general ignorance was just what had to be 
 met by general education, not by specific technical in- 
 struction. But drawing, as at the basis of all manual 
 arts whatever, he held to be an essential element in general 
 
jet. 4 8] WILLIAM MORRIS 
 
 49 
 
 education which should be worthy of the name. <c I think 
 undoubtedly everybody ought to be taught to draw just 
 as much as everybody ought to be taught to read and 
 write." 
 
 The principle thus laid down was accepted by the 
 Government eight years later, when by the Code of 
 1890 drawing was made a compulsory subje<5t in ele- 
 mentary schools for boys. The step thus taken was even 
 then somewhat in advance of public opinion. That 
 children should all be taught to read and write has now 
 so long been the law that it is accepted somewhat as a 
 matter of course, and protests against it are few and faint. 
 But the dodtrine that drawing is just as essential a part of 
 any real education is still regarded in many quarters as a 
 foolish, or at best an interesting paradox ; and such in- 
 struction in drawing as can be given, in an hour and a 
 half during each week, to children who are allowed to 
 leave school at the age of eleven, is still accepted as the 
 measure of the State's duty. 
 
 The divorce between the theory and practice of all the 
 manual arts was a matter against which Morris was always 
 emphatic in his protest. He co-operated loyally in the 
 work done in the teaching of design by the Schools of Art 
 dire<5ted from South Kensington. Since 1876, when he 
 first adted as an Examiner to the Art Department, he 
 served year after year until the last year of his life. The 
 work was not interesting to him; it is arduous while it 
 lasts, and the looking over large masses of thoroughly 
 mediocre work was a severe trial to his patience. But 
 he stuck to it for the sake of the good that might ulti- 
 mately come of it ; and in the latter years of his life he 
 had the satisfaction of seeing, in London and elsewhere, 
 noticeably at Birmingham, a real school of manual art 
 slowly form itself whose work was diredtly aimed at 
 pra&ice. 
 
 II. £ 
 
SO THE LIFE OF [1881 
 
 One secret of the excellence of Morris's own designs 
 was that he never designed anything which he did not 
 know how to produce with his own hands. He had 
 mastered the practical arts of dyeing and weaving before 
 he began to produce designs for dyed and woven stuffs 
 to be made in his workshops. " It is a thing to be de- 
 precated/' he says in his evidence before the Royal Com- 
 mission, " that there should be a class of mere artists 
 who furnish designs ready-made to what you may call 
 the technical designers. I think it is desirable that the 
 artist and what is technically called the designer should 
 pra&ically be one/' But this is not all. " A designer 
 ought to be able to weave himself. A man employs a 
 designer to draw his patterns. One of two things 
 happens: either the designer has learnt the method of 
 execution in a totally perfun&ory manner, and takes no 
 interest in it, but goes only by a certain set of rules, and 
 is therefore cramped and made dull and stupid by going 
 by them : or on the other hand if, as sometimes happens, 
 the manufa&urer goes to a more dignified kind of artist, 
 who, knowing nothing of the way in which the thing has 
 to be done, produces a kind of puzzle for the manufac- 
 turer, the manufacturer having paid for it takes it away 
 and does what he can with it, chops the design up and 
 adapts it to his purpose as well as he can ; the design is 
 spoilt, and when executed looks not better but worse 
 than the ordinary cut and dried trade design." 
 
 " Of late years," he stated in the same evidence, 
 " there has arisen in London a great number of half 
 professional designers, people who would be glad to get 
 work in designing. These people are generally very un- 
 educated in the technique of the arts they design for, 
 which is a great drawback." 
 
 Between the workman who had no understanding of 
 design and the designer who had no understanding of 
 
jet. 48] WILLIAM MORRIS 51 
 
 execution, the case of the manual arts was hopeless in- 
 deed. In both cases alike the root of the evil was sheer 
 ignorance ; and this ignorance was directly due to want, 
 in one case as much as the other, of proper education ; 
 as that again was due to the false division of labour — the 
 disintegration of labour, as it should more properly be 
 called — which forbade artist and workman alike to know 
 what they were at. 
 
 Thus stated the case seems simple enough. But the 
 simplest truths are often the last to be applied to practice. 
 The doctrines laid down by Morris before the Com- 
 mission were then startling and almost revolutionary ; 
 even now but little progress has been made in carrying 
 them out, though their abstract truth is generally ad- 
 mitted. There is a school of designers now, for the 
 most part formed under the influence of Morris's teaching, 
 who design with direct knowledge of the manufacturing 
 processes. But the encouragement given by the State to 
 the art of designing still takes the form of prizes for 
 designs in the air. " Not enough attention is given," 
 Morris said in his evidence, " to the turning out of the 
 actual goods themselves. We cannot give prizes for the 
 things turned out, we can only give prizes for the designs. 
 I think it would be a very good thing to give prizes for 
 the goods themselves. ,, The dislocation between the two 
 sides of the craftsman's education is still so great that 
 this step is thought impossible. 
 
 This had been his own experience when he first tried 
 to have carpets made from his own designs by the ordin- 
 ary manufacturers. He began with the simplest kind, 
 the so-called Kidderminster, a carpet of not more than 
 three colours, in which the pattern is produced by the 
 intersection at fixed points of webs interlaced by the 
 passage of the shuttle through a double or triple-tiered 
 warp. In the trial piece of carpet sent, the design was 
 
52 THE LIFE OF [1881 
 
 almost unrecognizable. A suspicion at first crossed his 
 mind that he was being played with : and that the manu- 
 facturer, who had frankly said on seeing the design that it 
 was too simple and would not do, had determined to justify 
 his opinion by spoiling it in the manufacture. But this was 
 not the case; he had acted in perfect good faith, and when 
 Morris said to him, cc But this is not my pattern," could 
 only answer, " This is how your pattern comes out." 
 Finally an interview was arranged with his " designer,'* 
 the man who set out the pattern on point paper for the 
 weavers. The root of all the trouble was then found 
 out in five minutes : it was merely this, that the designer 
 could not draw. The pattern was redrawn on point 
 paper in Morris's own workshop, and the carpet (which 
 has become an established pattern and is still the most 
 successful of all the woven carpets produced from Morris's 
 designs) was satisfactorily produced forthwith. 
 
 Of Morris's personal share in the firm's work in 
 general decoration and the application of the materials 
 produced by him to their specific purpose, some idea 
 may be formed from fragments of his correspondence 
 about this time with Mr. and Mrs. George Howard. 
 Their house in Palace Green had been recently built by 
 Webb, and was being decorated throughout by Morris. 
 The decoration of the dining-room was unusually careful 
 and elaborate, as it was designed as a setting for a series 
 of paintings on panel by Burne-Jones of the story of 
 Cupid and Psyche. 
 
 To Mrs. Howard he writes on the 13th of December, 
 1879: 
 
 " Ned Jones and I went to look at the effect of the 
 gold paper against the picture, and found to our grief 
 that it would not do: yesterday I went there to meet 
 him that we might try something else, but the morning 
 was so bad that he could not come out : this morning I 
 
jet. 48] WILLIAM MORRIS 53 
 
 find that you suggest leaving the matter till you come 
 up to town : but meanwhile, I, knowing that it would 
 be impossible to get the work done unless we began at 
 once, have set Leach's men at work to forward the job, 
 so that the drawing-room will be finished next week in 
 the way you wished ; and the boudoir has been prepared 
 for final painting and hanging, which would now take 
 less than a week to do at any time : Ned and I are going 
 to look at the room again on Sunday, so that I shall be 
 able to report again on Monday, so that if you agreed 
 to our suggestions there would still be time to finish the 
 room before you get back. I hope I have not done 
 wrong in setting Leach to work : if I have, I must plead 
 the usual excuse of fools, that I have adted for the best. 
 
 <c Dining-room. — I am bound to ask your pardon for 
 having negledted this job ; but I did not quite under- 
 stand what was to be done except the writing (which by 
 the way is a very difficult business) : I am now going to 
 set to work to design ornaments for the mouldings round 
 the pictures, the curved braces of ceiling, and the upper 
 part of the panelling. I fear there is little chance of get- 
 ting any of this done before your return (I mean executed 
 on the wood-work) but I will do my best to get every- 
 thing in train to start it on the first opportunity : mean* 
 time I have thought it best to tell Leach's man to varnish 
 only the lower part of the panelling, doors, shutters, etc., 
 where the ornament will not come." 
 
 And again two days later : 
 
 c< Ned and I duly went to Palace Green yesterday and 
 our joint conclusion was that the best hanging for the 
 walls of the boudoir would be the inclosed madder- 
 printed cotton : it brings out the greys of the pidture 
 better than anything else : also I think it would make a 
 pretty room with the wood-work painted a light blue- 
 green colour like a starling's egg ; and if you wanted 
 
54 THE LIFE OF [1881 
 
 Jrapery about it, we have beautiful stuffs of shades of 
 red that would brighten all up without fighting with the 
 wall-hangings : if you could like this and would let me 
 know some day this week, I could get all finished against 
 you come home, but if you still have doubts we would 
 leave the room in a forward state for finishing. To 
 complete the business part of my letter I may as well 
 give you the price of the red stuff: two shillings per 
 yard, yard-wide, which would come to less than the gold 
 sunflower would have done." 
 
 The decoration of the house was only completed very 
 gradually. Nearly two years later there is another series 
 of letters to Mrs. Howard : 
 
 <f Thank you for asking me personally about the pat- 
 terns: I have been to Oxford Street to-day and told 
 Smith to send off all our patterns that would be of any 
 use to you ; I have told him to write f recommended ' 
 and c specially recommended ' on certain of them. As 
 to the papers (sunflower and acorn), I will do what I can 
 to soften the colour. 
 
 " May I ask what you are going to do about the draw- 
 ing-room at Palace Green ? Ned tells me that you are 
 going to keep the Dies Domini there, and want to hang 
 the room accordingly : we don't like to do anything 
 there till the ceiling is made safe : what do you think of 
 hanging a piece of stuff behind it ? I could get the colour 
 better suited to it so, I believe. 
 
 " Ned has been doing a great deal to the dining-room 
 pictures and very much improving them : so that the room 
 will be light and pleasant after all, and the pidlures very 
 beautiful. 
 
 " As to the red dove and rose, for a curtain, it will last 
 as long as need be, since the cloth is really very strong : 
 I can't answer so decidedly as to the colour; but the 
 colours in it when looked at by themselves you will find 
 
jet. 48] WILLIAM MORRIS 55 
 
 rather full than not, 'tis the mixture that makes them 
 look delicate : therefore I believe the stuff to be quite 
 safe to use if you fancy it : of course I don't mean to say 
 that any flat-woven stuff can stand sunlight as well as a 
 piled material, and the velvet also is darker, though not 
 so well dyed as the other stuff. 
 
 4C As to the other version of the dove and rose, if 'tis 
 a smaller sized pattern in green and yellow, you can use 
 it without hesitation ; but if it be of the same size as the 
 red, I should scarcely advise it, if the settees are to have 
 heavy wear : you see we made this stuff for curtains and 
 hangings : I have tried a piece of the purple, turquoise, 
 and yellow as a cushion on a chair of my own on which 
 everybody sits : it has worn better than I expe&ed, but 
 still not like stuff made for it would do. As to the red 
 silk for curtains, what I am doing (for St. James's) is a 
 very fine colour; but also you must not forget that I can 
 do pretty well any colour you want, and of sober reds 
 the resources are great. Item, I can do the most ravish- 
 ing yellows, rather what people call amber : what would 
 you say to dullish pink shot with amber; like some of 
 those chrysanthemums we see just now ? I am going to 
 try that after Christmas. 
 
 u The gold and red sunflower is on my board at Queen 
 Square and I will do my best to hit the due colour." 
 
 Two letters written about the same time to Mr. 
 Howard, about defefts in some painted glass previously 
 executed by Morris for Naworth, are interesting alike 
 as showing the difficulties of working in untested material, 
 and the pride he took in the excellence of his own work. 
 
 c< 'Tis all too true about the Naworth windows : we 
 (and I believe all other glass-painters) were beguiled by 
 an untrustworthy colour, having borax in it, some years 
 ago ; and the windows painted with this are going all 
 over the country. Of course we have taken warning, 
 
56 THE LIFE OF [1881 
 
 and our work will now be all right. We have given in- 
 stru6tions to our man to take out the faulty glass, which 
 we will — restore ! — at once, and pay for that same our- 
 selves — worse luck ! " 
 
 <c Borax is the name of the culprit : the colour-makers, 
 finding that the glass-painters wanted a colour that would 
 burn well at a lowish temperature, mixed borax with it, 
 to that end ; but unluckily glass of borax is soluble in 
 water, and hence the tears wept by our windows — and 
 our purses. We use harder colour now, so that if any 
 window of ours goes now it must be from other causes ; 
 bad burning or the like ; I don't think as things go that 
 this is like to happen to us. 
 
 Cf I am very glad indeed that you think the east win- 
 dow a success ; I was very nervous about it, as the car- 
 toons were so good that I should have been quite upset 
 if I had not done them something like justice." 
 
 But perhaps the most important new development that 
 the business took after it was moved to Merton Abbey 
 was the production of printed cotton goods, the celebrated 
 " Morris chintzes/' which soon became more widely 
 known and more largely used than his woven stuffs or 
 wall-papers. Their success was so great that deliberate 
 or unconscious imitations of them soon began to be pro- 
 duced by the manufacturers and find a ready market. 
 Their adaptability to many small purposes gave them an 
 advantage over the paper-hangings and tapestries. To 
 hang a room with good hand-printed paper is a matter 
 of serious expense to many people who would like to do 
 it, but who do not very acutely realize the difference be- 
 tween it and a machine-printed paper that can be pro- 
 duced for one-sixth and bought for one-third of the price. 
 But a mere scrap of these bright and beautifully patterned 
 chintzes can be used to light up a room, as a curtain, or 
 the cover of a chair or a cushion, or in twenty other 
 
jet, 48J WILLIAM MORRIS 57 
 
 ways ; and perhaps the primary use for which these fabrics 
 were meant, that of wall-hangings, is the one to which 
 they have been most seldom applied. Paper-hangings 
 are so much taken for granted as the covering of the 
 walls of rich and poor houses alike, that people rarely 
 pause to consider their many disadvantages. The simpler 
 patterns of his chintzes Morris was able to produce at a 
 price little higher than that of moderately costly wall- 
 papers ; their decorative efFeft in a room is perhaps ten- 
 fold that of the papers ; and yet his appeal to use them 
 for the purpose for which they were meant fell on the 
 public in vain. People dressed themselves in his wall- 
 hangings, covered books with them, did this or that with 
 them according to their fancy ; but hang walls with them 
 they would not. 
 
 Between seventy and eighty designs in wall-papers, 
 and nearly forty in chintzes, were invented by Morris 
 and carried out under his eye in the course of his busi- 
 ness life. These numbers do not take account of the 
 variant designs where a different scheme of colours is 
 applied to the same pattern. If these be counted sepa- 
 rately, the total number of designs from his own hand 
 amounts to four hundred. In all of them the drawing and 
 the choice of colours were alike his own individual work. 
 The cutting of the blocks was done by workmen ; but 
 the cutter's tracing was always submitted to Morris for 
 retouching before it was rubbed off on the wood ; and he 
 kept till late years a vigilant eye both on his own dye- 
 vats and on the colour-pots of the paper-makers. It 
 may give some idea of the prodigious mass of his work 
 as a designer to add that the sum total of his designs for 
 paper-hangings, chintzes, woven stuffs, silk damasks, 
 stamped velvets, carpets, and tapestries (excluding the 
 hand-made carpets and the Arras tapestries, which were 
 each specially designed, and as a rule not duplicated) 
 
58 THE LIFE OF [1881 
 
 which were actually carried out, amounts to little short 
 of six hundred, besides countless designs for embroidery. 
 
 " Of the work at Merton," Mr. Wardle says, look- 
 ing back on it perhaps through something of that en- 
 chantment that is lent by distance, " there seems nothing 
 to say except that it was altogether delightful." It went 
 on in the ordered tranquillity of spacious and even beau- 
 tiful surroundings. There were pure water, light, and 
 air in abundance ; and the change from the cramped 
 quarters and grimy atmosphere of Bloomsbury reached 
 on the master's own temper. cc It is noticeable," says 
 Mr. Wardle, " in remembering his nervous tempera- 
 ment, that at Merton, though he disliked the journey 
 by rail intensely, he showed no irritation on arriving. 
 There remained a certain impetus in his manner, as if 
 he would still go at twenty miles an hour and rather ex- 
 pected everything to keep pace with him." It was nor 
 in his workshops alone that he seemed to expedt this, 
 nor was it in his workshops that the expectation was 
 oftenest disappointed. 
 
 But indeed even to the present day, as one turns out 
 of the dusty high road and passes through the manager's 
 little house, the world seems left in a moment behind. 
 The old-fashioned garden is gay with irises and daffodils 
 in spring, with hollyhocks and sunflowers in autumn, 
 and full, summer by summer, of the fragrant flowering 
 shrubs that make a London suburb into a brief June 
 Paradise. It rambles away towards the mill pond with 
 its fringe of tall poplars ; the cottons lie bleaching on 
 grass thickly set with buttercups ; the low long buildings 
 with the clear rushing little stream running between 
 them, and the wooden outside staircases leading to their 
 upper story, have nothing about them to suggest the 
 modern factory ; even upon the great sunk dye-vats the 
 sun flickers through leaves, and trout leap outside the 
 
jet. 48J WILLIAM MORRIS 59 
 
 windows of the long cheerful room where the carpet- 
 looms are built. " To Merton Abbey," runs an entry 
 in a visitor's diary on a day at the end of April, 1882, 
 when the new works had settled fairly down to their 
 routine : "white hawthorn was out in the garden: we 
 had tea with Mr. Morris in his room in the house, and 
 left laden with marsh-marigolds, wallflowers, lilac, and 
 hawthorn." Of these flowers, and of others in their 
 seasons, Morris often used to bring back bunches to 
 London with him, and wonder why any one should be 
 laughed at — as in London one then still was — for carry- 
 ing flowers. 
 
 Nor did it prove to be the case that these humanized 
 conditions, these pleasant surroundings of the work 
 carried on at Merton Abbey, were in any way fatal to 
 the success of the business as a matter of ordinary com- 
 merce. It was not from any disastrous experience of 
 his own that Morris was led to despair of the existing 
 order of things. In the most striking passage of his 
 evidence before the Technical Instruction Commission 
 he speaks of the prospects of art in a spirit of confidence 
 and even of cheerfulness. c< On the whole," he said, in 
 words which must have been at the time quite sincere — 
 for irony was a figure which he never used — <c one must 
 suppose that beauty is a marketable quality, and that the 
 better the work is all round both as a work of art and 
 in its technique, the more likely it is to find favour with 
 the public." And the use of technical education was not, 
 to his mind, to train a seledt caste of skilled designers and 
 workers, but one more broadly and indeed quite univers- 
 ally applicable: " that the public should know something 
 about it, so that you may get a market for excellence ." 
 
 This market for excellence he conquered himself, 
 partly by the mere force of his genius, and partly by 
 real business ability. He approached matters of busi- 
 
60 THE LIFE OF [1881 
 
 ness in so peculiar a spirit, that the question whether he 
 was really a good business man or not was often debated, 
 and is still debateable. Some of the qualities which go 
 to make up that character he undoubtedly possessed in 
 a high measure : above all perhaps, a certain indefinable 
 driving power — a quality as rare as it is valuable — which 
 was quite distinct from his own energy or industry, and 
 which hardly ever failed to affect those with whom he 
 came into personal contact. In his immediate sub- 
 ordinates — Mr. George Wardle first, and the Messrs. 
 Smith afterwards — he was fortunate in finding men who 
 caught this energy from him and yet retained with it a 
 full measure of shrewdness and caution. But such good 
 fortune, according to the Greek proverb so often quoted 
 by Aristotle, is in itself nearly akin to skill ; and the 
 choice of a good manager is in effect good management. 
 
 But for the ordinary processes of competitive com- 
 merce, and this as much before as after he adopted any 
 distinctively Socialistic views, his qualities, whether intel- 
 lectual or emotional, were not such as are calculated to 
 lead to conspicuous success. The truth is that commercial 
 success is an art which must be seriously pursued, and 
 which he, quite apart from any question of morality, was 
 at once too imaginative, too soft-hearted, and too much 
 engrossed by wholly different interests, to pursue seriously. 
 He carried on his business as a manufacturer not because 
 he wished to make money, but because he wished to make 
 the things he manufactured. The art of commerce as it 
 consists in buying material and labour cheaply, and forcing 
 the largest possible sale of the product, was one for which 
 he had little aptitude and less liking. In every manual 
 art which he touched, he was a skilled expert : in the 
 art of money-making he remained to the last an amateur. 
 Throughout he regarded material with the eye of the 
 artist, and labour with the eye of a fellow-labourer. He 
 
jet. 48] WILLIAM MORRIS 61 
 
 never grudged or haggled over the price of anything 
 which he thought really excellent of its kind and really 
 desirable for him to have ; he would dye with kermes 
 instead of cochineal if he could gain an almost imper- 
 ceptible richness of tone by doing so ; he would condemn 
 piece after piece of his manufacture that did not satisfy 
 his own severe judgment. And in his relations to his 
 workmen he had adopted the principle of the living wage, 
 and even of profit-sharing, before he began to study such 
 questions from a larger point of view. He could hardly 
 ever be induced to discharge a workman even for habitual 
 negligence or, in some cases which could be quoted, for 
 a&ual dishonesty. Of the feelings of his social inferiors 
 — or indeed of his social equals — he was sometimes 
 strangely inconsiderate ; but towards their weaknesses 
 he was habitually indulgent. 
 
 So far did he carry this interest in producing the best 
 work regardless of expense and this careless confidence 
 in the honesty of his workmen, that without some other 
 responsible business manager Merton Abbey would have 
 wrecked the fortunes of the firm. It was encumbered 
 with old or incompetent workmen paid by time, while 
 the more skilled hands were put on piece-work ; and 
 similarly in the office the inferior clerks had fixed salaries 
 for so many hours' work a day and no more, while the 
 upper clerks were to a certain extent profit-sharers in the 
 proceeds of the business. This system of profit-sharing 
 was, even during the later years at Queen Square, in pro- 
 cess of extension among the higher grades of the work- 
 men. The result of this mingled generosity and slackness 
 was that in the staple produdl of printed cottons the 
 Staffordshire manufacturers, with their keen eye to profit 
 and machine-like organization, could supply goods, pur- 
 porting at least to be the same in quality, forty per cent, 
 cheaper than they were turned out at Merton : and till 
 
62 THE LIFE OF [1881 
 
 the works were put under more stringent management, 
 the profits of Oxford Street were almost wholly absorbed 
 by the experiments and the leakage of Merton. 
 
 In Morris's lectures on Art, and more especially on those 
 lesser arts of life which, though his eye always remained 
 fixed on the greater arts in their culminating glories of 
 architecture and poetry, he had chosen for his own daily 
 province in practice, the outcome of those instincts which 
 had made him a manufacturer, and of that experience 
 which his work as a manufacturer had given him, is visible 
 in many passages of humour or wisdom. In the lecture 
 entitled c< Making the Best of it," it is himself whom he 
 describes with complete accuracy in his description of " a 
 handicraftsman who shall put his own individual intellig- 
 ence and enthusiasm into the goods he fashions. So far 
 from his labour being c divided/ which is the technical 
 phrase for his always doing one minute piece of work and 
 never being allowed to think of any other, so far from 
 that, he must know all about the ware he is making and 
 its relation to similar wares ; he must have a natural apti- 
 tude for his work so strong, that no education can force 
 him away from his special bent. He must be allowed 
 to think of what he is doing, and to vary his work as the 
 circumstances of it vary, and his own moods. He must 
 be for ever stirring to make the piece he is at work at 
 better than the last. He must refuse at anybody's bidding 
 to turn out, I won't say a bad, but even an indifferent 
 piece of work, whatever the public want, or think they 
 want. He must have a voice, and a voice worth listening 
 to, in the whole affair." 
 
 Such is the ideal handicraftsman whom he thus drew 
 from his own likeness. For what lay at the root of his 
 belief was that this life, the life which he had himself de- 
 liberately chosen, should be, and might be, accessible to 
 all. He recognized no essential difference between an 
 
jet, 48] WILLIAM MORRIS 
 
 63 
 
 artist and a workman. Until a state of society were 
 realized in which (according to his version of the Platonic 
 paradox) artists should be workmen, and workmen artists, 
 no really sound, and living, and permanent art could exist. 
 And the hire of the workman in any really civilized com- 
 munity should be precisely, neither more nor less, what he 
 claimed as his own due, and what he was satisfied with as 
 his own recompense : cc Money enough to keep him from 
 fear of want or degradation for him and his; leisure 
 enough from bread-earning work (even though it bepleasant 
 to him) to give him time to read and think, and connect 
 his own life with the life of the great world ; work enough 
 of the kind aforesaid, and praise of it, and encouragement 
 enough to make him feel good friends with his fellows ; 
 and lastly (not least, for 'tis verily part of the bargain) 
 his own due share of art, the chief part of which will be 
 a dwelling that does not lack the beauty which Nature 
 would freely allow it, if our own perversity did not turn 
 Nature out of doors." 
 
 In this last clause of his definition of the ideal life, not 
 for isolated individuals, nor for a cultured class, but for 
 universal mankind, he returns to his perpetual insistence 
 on the value of architecture, in its widest sense, as the be- 
 ginning and end of all the arts of life. To him, the man 
 lived in the house almost as the soul lives in the body. 
 The degradation of architecture and of its subservient arts 
 of decoration was at once the cause and the effect of the 
 whole degradation of human life. 
 
 But how to begin? His own work as a decorator led 
 him to see that in the furnishing of the house, such as it 
 was, a practical beginning, however slight, might be made 
 by every one. Hence he was led to the formulation of 
 his celebrated rule — a rule that, as he said without boast- 
 ing, will fit everybody ; u Have nothing in your houses 
 that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be 
 
64 THE LIFE OF [1881 
 
 beautiful." There is no more brilliant example of a rule 
 that is at once completely universal in its scope, and com- 
 pletely certain in its application. 
 
 " To my mind," he says in another le6ture, " it is only 
 here and there (out of the kitchen) that you can find in 
 a well-to-do house things that are of any use at all." By 
 this accumulation of useless things not only are beautiful 
 things kept out, but the very sense of beauty is perpetu- 
 ally dulled and ground away. If this pressure were once 
 removed — so at least he thought, and it can hardly be 
 considered an Utopian belief — the natural sense of beauty 
 would slowly begin to recover itself, and at last the house 
 that had in it nothing but what was known to be useful 
 would come to have in it nothing but what was really 
 beautiful ; the mistaken or bewildered belief in the beauty 
 of ugly things would disappear, and with the dwindling 
 demand for them they would gradually cease to be pro- 
 duced, and fade away bit by bit out of the world. 
 
 Closely connected with this doctrine was his second 
 cardinal axiom : cc No work which cannot be done with 
 pleasure in the doing is worth doing." That <c natural 
 aptitude for his work so strong that no education can 
 force him away from his special bent" was a quality in 
 him which he could not believe to be unique or even 
 peculiar. f< I tried to think what would happen to me," 
 he says in another lecture, that entitled <c The Prospers of 
 Architecture in Civilization," " if I were forbidden my 
 ordinary daily work ; and I knew that I should die of 
 despair and weariness. It was clear to me that I worked 
 not in the least in the world for the sake of earning 
 leisure by it, but partly driven by the fear of starvation 
 or disgrace, and partly, and even a very great deal, be- 
 cause I love the work itself." As he accounted labour 
 without pleasure inhuman, so he claimed as the labourers 
 right an amount of spontaneity in his work that was far 
 
jet. 4 8] WILLIAM MORRIS 65 
 
 removed from the adtual conditions of common labour. 
 What he could least bear, he used to say, if he were a 
 workman, was the uninterrupted work required of them 
 during working hours, and he was sorry for men who had 
 to do it. While he was working himself it was always 
 noticeable how he would break off every now and then to 
 get up and look out of the window, or walk up and down 
 the room, and yet his adlual output would be faster and 
 more continuous than that of any workman who never 
 stirred from his bench or took his hand off his machine. 
 His horror of pleasureless labour made him keenly sym- 
 pathetic with the working man even in his least lovely 
 phases. u If I were to work ten hours a day at work I 
 despised and hated, I should spend my leisure, I hope in 
 political agitation, but 1 fear in drinking." Even of the 
 ideal workman described above, the workman who is an 
 artist, he confesses that " the capitalist will be apt to call 
 him a troublesome fellow ; and in fadt he will be trouble- 
 some, mere grit and fridtion in the wheels of the money- 
 making machine, yes, will stop the machine perhaps." 
 And so for the workman who was troublesome without 
 being an artist, who was grit in the wheels from no high 
 discontent or haunting ideal, but only from the incompet- 
 ence and vice he had inherited from a degraded ancestry 
 and developed in an inhuman environment, he made the 
 largest allowances and had almost inexhaustible patience. 
 
 Thus it was that, before and after the adoption of his 
 final political creed, Morris carried on his work patiently 
 from day to day, and thus it was that he exhorted others 
 by word and example to carry on theirs ; <c not living 
 like fools and fine gentlemen, and not beaten by the 
 muddle, but like good fellows trying by some dim candle- 
 light to set our workshop ready against to-morrow's day- 
 light." Blessed is that servant, whom his lord when he 
 cometh shall find so doing. 
 
 11. F 
 
CHAPTER XIV 
 
 CONCENTRATION 
 1882 
 
 Of the year between the establishment of the works at 
 Merton Abbey and the return of Morris to a6tive poli- 
 tical life as a member of the Socialist party at the begin- 
 ning of 1883, it so happens that there are unusually few 
 records. Perhaps their scarcity is not altogether accid- 
 ental. He was working out new theories of life; he was 
 doing this very much alone; and he had less leisure than 
 usual, and perhaps less inclination than leisure, for corre- 
 spondence, or for holiday-making, or for anything beyond 
 work and thought. cc I feel a lonely kind of a chap," he 
 says of himself, half humorously and half self-pityingly. 
 Early in the year he had gone down with his elder 
 daughter to the little house at Rottingdean which Burne- 
 Joneshad bought the year before. From there he wrote 
 to Mrs. Burne- Jones on the 10th of January : 
 
 "Here we are: having just come back from an ex- 
 pedition to Brighton: we spent an hour or more in the 
 aquarium (where our presence caused astonishment, YE 
 Old English Fair not having begun till the afternoon, nor 
 the other damnations which are strung on the much neg- 
 lected fish). I think I saw more ugly people in Brighton 
 in the course of an hour than I have seen otherwise for the 
 last twenty years: as you justly remark, serves me right 
 for going into Brighton : but you see we went there to 
 do a little shopping. Yesterday was a lovely day, and 
 
jet. 48] THE LIFE OF WILLIAM MORRIS 67 
 
 we took a trap and drove to Lewes : you have to go a 
 long way round, as the wheel-roads across the downs are 
 doubtful it seems : it is very beautiful when you get on 
 to the brow of the hill above Falmer : a long way off to 
 the right you can see Lewes lying like a box of toys under 
 a great amphitheatre of chalk hills : the whole ride is 
 very pleasant: Lewes when you get there lies on a ridge 
 in its valley, the street winding down to the river (Ouse) 
 which runs into the sea at Newhaven : on the whole it is 
 set down better than any town I have seen in England : 
 unluckily it is not a very interesting town in itself : there 
 is a horrible workhouse or prison on the outskirts, and 
 close by a hideous row of builders' houses : there are 
 three old Churches in it, dismally restored, but none of 
 them ever over-remarkable: there is the remain of a 
 castle, 14th century: but it is not grand at all. Never 
 the less it isn't a bad country town, only not up to its 
 position. 
 
 " The house is very pleasant and agreeable and suits 
 me to a T ; and I am in very good order, and quite 
 satisfied, bating a little unavoidable anxiety, though J. 
 has been hitherto quite well and seemingly very happy. 
 I am hard at work on my Birmingham ledture : I don't 
 feel as if I had much left to say, but must do all I can 
 to say it decently, so as not to discredit the cause." 
 
 To write a new ledlure was still immense labour and 
 pain to him : " I know what I want to say, but the cursed 
 words go to water between my fingers " ; and the dis- 
 couragement in which he writes to Mrs. Burne-Jones 
 again on his return to London a week later is partly no 
 doubt the effect of this struggle over the ledure on 
 <c Some of the Minor Arts of Life," which he was now 
 preparing. It was delivered at the Midland Institute, 
 Birmingham, on the 23rd of January, and was afterwards 
 printed, under the title of c< The Lesser Arts of Life," 
 
68 THE LIFE OF [1882 
 
 in the volume of ledures on Art published that year in 
 aid of the funds of the Society for Protection of Ancient 
 Buildings. In both letters it will be noticed that the 
 "cause" still means to him primarily and specifically that 
 of art, though the name of art has taken to him a new 
 and a more profound meaning. 
 
 <C I am just going to finish my day with a couple of 
 hours' work on my lecture, but will first write you a line, 
 since pen, ink, and paper are at hand, and seeing withal 
 that to-morrow I shall not have any time at all to 
 myself. 
 
 " May came to hand safely this morning, thank you 
 kindly for having her. As to Jenny, she has been to my 
 joy very well and in bright spirits all the week, so I have 
 no doubt our sojourn there did her good : it was her 
 birthday on Tuesday: 21 my dear old Jenny was. 
 
 " I have perhaps rather more than enough of work to 
 do, and for that reason or what not, am dwelling some- 
 what low down in the valley of humiliation — quite good 
 enough for me doubtless. Yet it sometimes seems to me 
 as if my lot was a strange one : you see, I work pretty 
 hard, and on the whole very cheerfully, not altogether I 
 hope for mere pudding, still less for praise ; and while 
 I work I have the cause always in mind, and yet I know 
 that the cause for which I specially work is doomed to 
 fail, at least in seeming; I mean that art must go under, 
 where or how ever it may come up again. I don't know 
 if I explain what I'm driving at, but it does sometimes 
 seem to me a strange thing indeed that a man should be 
 driven to work with energy and even with pleasure and 
 enthusiasm at work which he knows will serve no end 
 but amusing himself; am I doing nothing but make- 
 believe then, something like Louis XVI.'s lock-making? 
 There, I don't pretend to say that the conundrum is a 
 very interesting one, as it certainly has not any pra&ical 
 
jet. 48] WILLIAM MORRIS 69 
 
 importance as far as I am concerned, since I shall without 
 doubt go on with my work, useful or useless, till I 
 demit. 
 
 <c Well, one thing I long for which will certainly come, 
 the sunshine and the spring. Meantime we are hard at 
 work gardening here: making dry paths, and a sublimely 
 tidy box edging : how I do love tidyness ! " 
 
 A letter to Mr. George Howard of about the same 
 date shows that he had not yet wholly dissociated himself 
 from the Liberal party, nor given up the hopes which had 
 excited him after the General Election of 1 880. He had 
 then looked eagerly to the formation of an independent 
 Radical wing which might force the Whigs to move for- 
 ward on penalty of being thrown out of office. The 
 amalgamation of Whigs and Tories as a powerful consti- 
 tutional or Unionist party, to prevent such a result, had 
 not yet occurred to him as the natural outlet from this 
 position ; though soon afterwards, and long before the 
 thing a&ualiy happened, he foresaw it with much clear- 
 ness. 
 
 <f Rottingdean, 
 
 "Jan. 10th, 1882. 
 
 u My dear George, 
 
 4C You see I am away for a few days, which ac- 
 counts for my not answering your letter at once : we 
 had a letter from the parson's wife of Brampton asking 
 for patterns for that same : I bid them send a big worsted 
 pattern which I thought would be best, as 'tis mostly 
 blue, which I fancy the Church wants : only you must 
 think that under that very bright window all woven 
 stuffs will look grey. If the blue looks too grey, I fear 
 there is nothing for it but the brightest red : we have a 
 woollen stuff very bright and telling (3-ply pomegranate), 
 or would red damask silk be too costly ? 
 
70 THE LIFE OF [1882 
 
 iC I suppose your election is the North Riding : I 
 haven't seen a paper for four days, so don't know how 
 it 's going ; so can only wish you good speed : I make, 
 with all apologies for my impudence, the unpolitical re- 
 mark, that I hope you have got a good candidate : 'tis 
 better to be beaten with a good one than be successful 
 with a bad one. I guess there will be a fine procession 
 of rats before this parliament is over : that will teach us, 
 I hope, not to run the worst man possible on all occasions, 
 Excuse the spleen of a kind of Radical cobbler. 
 "With best wishes from 
 
 " Yours affectionately, 
 
 "William Morris." 
 
 Two months later he writes again to Mr. Howard in 
 a much less philosophic vein. A sudden risk had arisen 
 that the works at Merton Abbey might be ruined by the 
 cutting off of the water-supply of the Wandle. 
 
 c< Merton Abbey, 
 
 "March 16th, 1882. 
 
 c< My dear George, 
 
 cf I am in a fix — for look here ; I took this place 
 muchly for the sake of its water-power, and for the water 
 of the Wandle ; and now the Wandle is going to be dried 
 up — no less — there is a bill before a committee on Mon- 
 day, as I hear suddenly, to enable the London and South 
 Western Water Company to tap the head springs of the 
 river at Carshalton : the river is almost wholly fed from 
 these springs, and tapping them thus would reduce it to 
 a muddy ditch. As to myself I don't much care, as I 
 always said we ought to have gone into the country, but 
 on public grounds I could burst when I think of it : the 
 Wandle from here upwards is a most beautiful stream 
 
jet, 48] WILLIAM MORRIS 71 
 
 as perhaps you know. I shall try to see you on Saturday 
 morning ; but meantime can you do anything in the 
 House to help to stop such a damned iniquity ? 
 
 <c Yours affe&ionately, 
 
 " William Morris/' 
 
 He unburdens himself on the same subjedt in the letter 
 to Ellis which follows. The first part of it relates to 
 alterations in the channel of the upper Thames recently 
 made by the Conservancy, which had the effedt of draining 
 off the Kelmscott backwater and making the boat-house 
 there useless. Ellis had just brought up some perch from 
 Kelmscott to stock the water at Merton Abbey. 
 
 c< Kelmscott House, 
 
 "March 22nd, 1882. 
 
 « My dear Ellis, 
 
 " Thank you for your note : I imagine I under- 
 stand what they are going to do, although your explana- 
 tion would have been helped by a plan : I had heard 
 something of this before, but hoped it would not take place 
 in our time. However something they will leave behind 
 them so long as the old house stands ; only strange it is 
 that we are tumbled just into the time when these things 
 go quickest : after us in a while I think things will mend ; 
 before us change was slower. Meanwhile I ought to 
 have thanked you for your perch before, especially as I 
 know what a trouble it is to bring such wet goods up to 
 town : only, news for news, nay, water news for water 
 news, I have suddenly discovered that it may not be long 
 that they will have water to swim in ; whereas a society, 
 calling itself the London and South Western Spring Water 
 Company, has a bill in Parliament to enable them to sink 
 a well at Carshalton which will drain the Carshalton 
 Wandle, and give us a muddy ditch instead of my water 
 
72 THE LIFE OF [1882 
 
 and water-power: jolly isn't it? there are 7 miles of 
 Wandle and 40 mills on that 7 miles, and here we are to 
 be landed without compensation just to put some money 
 into promoters pockets, unless we can manage to get 
 the bill thrown out in Committee. You see that 'tis 
 jobbery (not mastery) that mows the meadow: what 
 compensation we should have got, if this had been public 
 money that was in question ! However there is a strong 
 opposition to the thieves, so perhaps my perch may die 
 a natural death (by hook to wit) after all. I was up 
 the water to-day to see about this matter, and at Car- 
 shalton for the first time ; a pretty place still in spite of 
 the building. 
 
 "Yours ever truly, 
 
 " William Morris" 
 
 The opposition to the Bill, in which Morris had, of 
 course, the hearty support of the other thirty-nine mill- 
 owners immediately concerned in the Wandle as a source 
 of water-power, was successful. " The water company," 
 he writes at the end of March, <c terrified by our bold 
 front, has climbed down and has agreed not to meddle 
 with the Wandle : so this time I am quit for the fright, 
 and whatsoever part of ^50 the lawyers' conscience will 
 let them grab of me. Cheap at the price both for me 
 and the public I think, since I have seen more of the 
 river. On Wednesday Wardle and I went up the river 
 and saw as much as we could get at : a wild day of 
 storm and bitter wind it turned out, yet I think we en- 
 joyed it. As we got to Wallington I thought I would 
 go and call on Arthur Hughes, and did so to my pleasure : 
 we were very glad to see each other, though perhaps 
 when we got to talking were somewhat gravelled : he 
 lives in a beautiful place, and the Croydon branch of the 
 Wandle sweeps round his bit of close. 
 
jet. 49] WILLIAM MORRIS 73 
 
 " I went up the water again on Friday with G. Howard 
 and R. Grosvenor and had a pleasant half rainy day, 
 seeing a great deal of the water, much of it quite quiet 
 and unspoiled ; it is really very beautiful, crystal clear in 
 spite of all the mills. When you come on the ponds at 
 Carshalton, where it rises or seems to rise, the surprise is 
 most delightful and strange : a village green, only the 
 green is the pond, quite bright and clear, the road across 
 the fall of it from one level to another, and springs 
 bubbling up amidst it all over. The whole river swarms 
 with trout." 
 
 This peril over, work at Merton went on pleasantly 
 and successfully. <c I have just twice as much to do 
 since we began at Merton," he writes in June. "At the 
 same time I think it likely enough that my carpet busi- 
 ness may fail commercially. I shan't like that ; but as to 
 giving up the whole affair because of it, if I say so it is 
 mere ill-temper on my part, always supposing we can 
 struggle on somehow/' But his daughter's severe and 
 repeated illnesses during the summer and autumn upset 
 the whole year for him. It is not putting the case too 
 strongly to say that for the time they thoroughly shat- 
 tered his nerve, though the private correspondence in 
 which this appears is neither meant nor suited for a wider 
 public. 
 
 This household anxiety coloured all the world to him : 
 and even Kelmscott that year could not charm away his 
 melancholy. The sense of change seemed brooding 
 everywhere, and a dim shadow of unhappiness clung 
 about the " sweet-looking clean waterside." He felt it 
 even at Godstow, tc less changed than any beautiful 
 place I know, the very fields that stretch up to Wytham 
 much the same as they always were with their wealth of 
 poplar and willow trees, the most beautiful meadows to 
 be seen anywhere." c< So it will be," he goes on, "till 
 
74 THE LIFE OF [1882 
 
 civilized life is quite changed, every alteration in the 
 material world will be for the worse." 
 
 The same desperate concentration of mind, the feeling 
 of one thing, and one thing alone, being needful, re- 
 appears in another letter which is one of the extremely- 
 rare instances of his criticism of a contemporary writer. 
 It was written soon after the publication of Mr. Swin- 
 burne's c< Tristram of Lyonnesse." 
 
 " As to the poem, I have made two or three attempts 
 to read it, but have failed, not being in the mood I 
 suppose : nothing would lay hold of me at all. This is 
 doubtless my own fault, since it certainly did seem very 
 fine. But, to confess and be hanged, you know I never 
 could really sympathize with Swinburne's work; it 
 always seemed to me to be founded on literature, not on 
 nature. In saying this I really cannot accuse myself of 
 any jealousy on the subject, as I think also you will not. 
 Now I believe that Swinburne's sympathy with literature 
 is most genuine and complete ; and it is a pleasure to 
 hear him talk about it, which he does in the best vein 
 possible ; he is most steadily enthusiastic about it. Now 
 time was when the poetry resulting merely from this 
 intense study and love of literature might have been, if 
 not the best, yet at any rate very worthy and enduring : 
 but in these days when all the arts, even poetry, are like 
 to be overwhelmed under the mass of material riches 
 which civilization has made and is making more and 
 more hastily every day ; riches which the world has 
 made indeed, but cannot use to any good purpose : in 
 these days the issue between art, that is, the godlike 
 part of man, and mere bestiality, is so momentous, and 
 the surroundings of life are so stern and unplayful, that 
 nothing can take serious hold of people, or should do so, 
 but that which is rooted deepest in reality and is quite 
 at first hand : there is no room for anything which is 
 
jet. 49] WILLIAM MORRIS 75 
 
 not forced out of a man of deep feeling, because of its 
 innate strength and vision. 
 
 " In all this I may be quite wrong and the lack may 
 be in myself: I only state my opinion, I don't defend 
 it ; still less do I my own poetry." 
 
 He was thinking in these last words, no doubt, of his 
 own unwritten poem on the same subjedl, the story of 
 Tristram and Iseult: the one which his cc soul yearned 
 to do " twelve years before, when he had just completed 
 " The Earthly Paradise," and which was the episode of 
 the whole Arthurian cycle that held his imagination 
 most strongly. 
 
 On the 23rd of August he writes more cheerfully to 
 Mrs. Burne-Jones : 
 
 cc We went on Saturday to call on the De Morgans at 
 Witley and found them lodging in a newish red brick 
 house, the surroundings of which rather reminded one 
 of Mrs. Bodichon's Scalands : afterwards we drove down 
 with them and the Allinghams through woodland lanes 
 up on to the great commons and Hind Head Hill on 
 the Portsmouth Road : covered it was, much of it, with 
 heather and ling, all in blossom at this season, and seeming 
 to me not the best chosen of colours though so very 
 bright ; but the place is very beautiful, and amazingly free 
 from anything Cockney-base, considering how near it is 
 to London : the best part of it the beauty of the oaks, 
 now in their new foliage hanging about the rare corn- 
 fields ; for the tilth is scanty in this sandy woodland 
 country. Allingham's dwelling is in a very pleasant and 
 beautiful spot, but the house highly uninteresting though 
 not specially hideous, nor the get up inside of it very 
 pleasant (though not very bad), as you might imagine : 
 the garden too that discomforting sort of place that a 
 new garden with no special natural gifts is apt to be : I 
 should like to have made them better it. As to that 
 
76 THE LIFE OF [1882 
 
 country in general, in spite of all its beauty, it didn't 
 quite touch me (except as pleasant hills and meadows 
 and lanes). For one thing it is very thinly inhabited, 
 and looks more than most countrysides as if it were 
 kept for the pleasure of the rich, as indeed it is : but I 
 don't know anything of it but this one visit. I must 
 take a turn of walking through it one day : for this thing 
 interests me in it, that if ever I am to live out of London 
 (as I don't suppose I ever shall), and Merton goes on, 
 somewhere thereabouts I should have to pitch my tent. 
 
 €C I am much encouraged by your interest in our 
 Merton Crafts, and shall do my best to make it pay so 
 that we may keep it going, though, as I have told you, 
 I can't hide from myself that there is a chance of failure 
 (commercial I mean) in the matter : in which case I must 
 draw in my horns, and try to shuffle out of the whole 
 affair decently, and live thereafter small and certain if 
 possible : little would be my grief at that same. This 
 is looking at the worst side, which I think one ought to 
 do ; but I think we shall on the whole succeed ; though 
 a rich man (so-called) I never either can or will become: 
 nay, I am trying in a feeble way to be more thrifty — 
 whereof no more, lest I boast now and be disgraced at 
 Christmas. 
 
 " I have been reading more of Carlyle's life, and find 
 it deeply interesting in spite of Froude ; usually I find 
 biographies dull to extremity, I suppose because they 
 are generally a mass of insincerities and platitudes : but 
 in this book is a man speaking who can say what he 
 thinks even in a letter (I wish I could). I like him 
 much the better for having read this book, after that 
 other mass of moodiness, and I fare to feel as if he were 
 on the right side in spite of all faults. 
 
 " I have to go now to Oxford Street and then to the 
 Mansion House to the Icelandic Relief Committee, which 
 
jet, 49] WILLIAM MORRIS 77 
 
 I am afraid owing to the time of the year is like to be a 
 dead failure." 
 
 A week later he writes again : 
 
 " I have not been well, and there have been other 
 troubles also of which I won't speak, and the sum of all 
 has rather made me break down. 
 
 c< I hope I am not quite unhumble, or want to be the 
 only person in the world untroubled ; but I have been 
 ever loth to think that there were no people going 
 through life, not without pain indeed, but with sim- 
 plicity and free from blinding entanglements. Such an 
 one I want to be, and my faith is that it is possible for 
 most men to be no worse. Yet indeed I am older, and 
 the year is evil; the summerless season, and famine and 
 war, and the folly of peoples come back again, as it were, 
 and the more and more obvious death of art before 
 it rises again, are heavy matters to a small creature like 
 me, who cannot choose but think about them, and can 
 mend them scarce a whit. 
 
 " However, to stand up for oneself and tip them 
 Long Melford, as Miss Berners says (and also in his 
 way old Carlyle), is the only cure; and indeed I try it 
 at whiles/' 
 
 With the exception of two ledtures given on behalf 
 of the Society for Protection of Ancient Buildings, the 
 Iceland Famine Relief Fund was the only public matter 
 in which Morris took any part during the year. In the 
 depths of his own household anxiety this work came as 
 a kind of relief ; and during August and September he 
 was busy over it, writing letters to the newspapers and 
 making personal appeals to all his acquaintance. " For 
 those," he wrote to the Times on the 5th of August, 
 "who have never been in Iceland nor read its ancient 
 literature there still remains the undoubted fadt that they 
 are a kindly, honest, and intelligent people, bearing their 
 
78 THE LIFE OF [1882 
 
 lot, at the best a hard one, with singular courage and 
 cheerfulness, and keeping up through all difficulties in 
 their remote desert (for such indeed is the land in spite of 
 its beauty and romance) an elevation of mind and a high 
 degree of culture, which would be honourable to countries 
 much more favoured by nature." But the work could 
 not distraft him long from his own thoughts. <c I have 
 had a bad time of it lately and feel ten years older than 
 I did in June," he writes again six weeks later. " I saw 
 to-day about a book written by an Italian peasant (near 
 Verona) complaining of their misery. How shocking it 
 seemed to me that all the riches of rich lands should be 
 wasted till they are no better than the poorest for most 
 men. Think what the constitution of civilized society 
 must be when the Italian peasant is not better off, but 
 worse off (taking one year with another), than his brother 
 of Iceland ! 99 
 
 In connexion with this Icelandic famine and the work 
 of the Mansion House Committee there is a most char- 
 acteristic note to Ellis written from Kelmscott on the 
 29th of September. It should perhaps be explained 
 that there had been correspondence in the London papers 
 making little of the distress in Iceland, and questioning 
 whether there were in faft any famine at all there. Mr. 
 Magnusson had just started for Reykjavik with the 
 money and provisions already collected, in order to in- 
 vestigate matters on the spot. 
 
 " I am so vexed that you should have had all this 
 trouble ; except for the circumstances which you know 
 of, I would have made a point of staying in London and 
 seeing the matter through. I cannot find that beastly 
 letter. When I saw you Monday week I put what letters 
 I thought would be wanted into an envelope which I in- 
 tended to give you, but I was so muddled by my own 
 troubles that I daresay I did not ; nor can I be sure that 
 
jet. 49] WILLIAM MORRIS 79 
 
 the letter was in it. Meantime I have written a letter 
 to the bloody Times which I also inclose ; if you think it 
 worth while please send it on : after which I really don't 
 see what any of us can do till Magnusson comes back. 
 I repeat I am so vexed that you should have been let in 
 for such worrits — I am reminded of Swinburne's view of 
 providence when he said that he never saw an old gentle- 
 man give a sixpence to a beggar, but he was straightway 
 run over by a 'bus." 
 
 But apart from all private anxieties, the pressure on 
 Morris's mind during these autumn and winter months 
 seems from several indications to have been greater than 
 it was either before or since. It is a curious sign of his 
 loneliness and self-absorption at this time, that no two of 
 his friends (so far as I am able to ascertain) agree in 
 their view of the steps by which he became a convinced 
 Socialist and the main influences — whether men or events 
 or books — that served to shape his course at this time 
 precisely in the way it took. His own letters of the time, 
 so far as they exist, give little clue to any changes which 
 were going on in his mind. The account which he him- 
 self gave some ten years later is no doubt abstractly ac- 
 curate. M A brief period of political Radicalism," he 
 then wrote, <c during which I saw my ideal clear enough, 
 but had no hope of any realization of it, came to an end 
 some months before I joined the Democratic Federation, 
 and the meaning of my joining that body was, that I had 
 conceived a hope of the realization of that ideal." But 
 for the growth of this hope no one cause can be assigned. 
 He once said to Mr. G. B. Shaw that he had been con- 
 verted to Socialism by Mill, in his posthumously pub- 
 lished papers analyzing the system of Fourier, in which 
 he <c clearly gave the verdicft against the evidence." In 
 the article already quoted, Morris alludes to these papers, 
 and says that they put the finishing touch to his conver- 
 
80 THE LIFE OF [1882 
 
 sion. It may be doubted whether even this modified state- 
 ment is not an unconscious over-statement, and whether 
 Morris does not here mix up the causes of his conversion 
 with the reasons by which that conversion could be 
 justified. For some considerable time after he became 
 a professed Socialist, he worked hard at the task of prov- 
 ing his belief. " I put some conscience into trying to 
 learn the economical side of Socialism, and even tackled 
 Marx, though I sufFered agonies of confusion of the 
 brain over reading the economics of that work." But the 
 belief, while it was not unreasoned, was not the outcome 
 (if any belief be) of abstradt economic reasoning. 
 
 While it is true to say that during these months Morris 
 was moving towards Socialism, it would also be true to 
 say that Socialism was moving towards him. It was " the 
 consciousness of revolution stirring," he says himself, 
 which " prevented me, luckier than many others of artistic 
 perceptions, from crystallizing into a mere railer against 
 progress on the one hand, and on the other from wasting 
 time and energy in any of the numerous schemes by which 
 the quasi-artistic of the middle classes hope to make art 
 grow when it has no longer any root." His own beliefs 
 and sympathies changed little, while the tendency of 
 public thought was changing fast, and he might reason- 
 ably claim that, both before and after this so-called parting 
 of the ways, he had, since he first began to think for him- 
 self, been consistent throughout his life. The history 
 of the Socialist movement in England during the years 
 which succeeded the war of 1870 has yet to be written; 
 and a biographer would be straying far beyond the limits 
 of his appointed task if he became an analyst of social 
 conditions or a historian of institutions. But it must be 
 noted that just at this time, that spirit of profound dis- 
 content, which is also a spirit of hope — which, unable to 
 rest in the present, looks forward and not backward — 
 
jet. 49] WILLIAM MORRIS 81 
 
 was widely in the air. " All countries and all individuals 
 hang to the past, but seem hardly to think of the future. 
 I suppose we should, like the Jewish prophets, get the 
 habit of looking onwards to the future and not backwards 
 to the past." Such, a generation earlier, had been the 
 words of one of the great formative intelligences of the 
 age, as he observed, not without a large degree of sym- 
 pathy, the Chartist movement and the Christian Social- 
 ism of Kingsley and Maurice. It seemed now as if 
 this spirit were once more in the ascendant. cf The era 
 of administration has come 99 was a phrase much in the 
 mouths of economic writers. The Irish legislation of 
 successive Governments had already, in the judgment 
 of dispassionate observers, committed one, if not both, 
 of the two great political parties to what might be pro- 
 perly called a Socialist programme. The International, 
 though as an organized force it had been broken up 
 in 1872, had even in its dispersion scattered widely the 
 seeds of a cosmopolitan revolt against the domination 
 of capital and of the middle classes. Its doctrines had 
 to some extent permeated the leading English Trades 
 Unions. Intelligent London artisans had in large num- 
 bers familiarized themselves with the doctrines of Karl 
 Marx and the more recent theories of Henry George. 
 At meetings of working men there were shouts for Revo- 
 lution. The repressive measures taken in France and 
 Austria after the Commune, and in Germany by Bismarck 
 some years later, had incidentally filled London with 
 foreign refugees, whose influence spread silently in many 
 directions. The position may be summed up in Morris's 
 own words by saying that there was no longer, among the 
 mass of the working class in London, any decided hostility 
 to Socialism, and that the working man who took an 
 interest in politics was generally in favour of Socialist 
 tendencies so far as he understood them. 
 
 11. 
 
 G 
 
82 THE LIFE OF [1882 
 
 In 1 88 1 an effort had been set on foot to organize the 
 various Radical clubs of working men in different parts 
 of London, and to give the organization a definite bias 
 in favour of what were becoming known as Socialistic 
 principles. The result was the formation of a body- 
 known as the Democratic Federation. Its programme 
 was, broadly speaking, that of the political Radicalism of 
 the time, and directed towards alterations in the mere 
 machinery of government — annual Parliaments, payment 
 of Members, abolition of the House of Lords, and the 
 like. The only distinctively <c Socialist" article in its creed 
 was a claim, not further defined, for the nationalization 
 of land. 
 
 But as time went on the Federation became, partly by 
 the secession of members who belonged to the older school 
 of Radicalism, partly by a new enthusiasm among the 
 younger men, more and more Socialist in general tendency 
 and sympathy: and the practical changes which it ad- 
 vocated all went in the direction of setting up a State 
 Socialism of a somewhat drastic kind. The cc Democrat 
 without ulterior views" of the previous generation was be- 
 coming a Social Democrat ; was asking what was the use 
 of democratic institutions, and whether they were an end 
 or only a means. Once this question was fairly raised, the 
 whole ey : sting system of society began to rock and waver. 
 To the new analysis, the status of a middle class was as 
 artificial, and therefore as capable of removal, as all the 
 privileges and anomalies which had been swept away by 
 that middle class itself, when once it took the pains to 
 organize itself and set hand to the work. People were 
 even beginning to ask themselves, with a sudden shock 
 of disenchantment, what reason there was for the exist- 
 ence of a middle class at all. 
 
 " Numbers of young men," such was the account given 
 some seven years later by one of the most thoughtful 
 
jet. 49] WILLIAM MORRIS 
 
 83 
 
 leaders of the movement, which had then parted with 
 some of its unreasoning enthusiasm and lost the dazzle 
 of its earlier hope, "pupils of Mill, Spencer, Comte, and 
 Darwin, roused by Mr. Henry George's ' Progress and 
 Poverty/ left aside evolution and free thought ; took to 
 insurrectionary economics ; studied Karl Marx ; and were 
 so convinced that Socialism had only to be put clearly be- 
 fore the working classes to concentrate the power of their 
 immense numbers in one irresistible organization, that 
 the Revolution was fixed for 1889 (the anniversary of 
 the French Revolution) at latest. The opposition we 
 got was uninstru&ive: it was mainly founded on the 
 assumption that our projects were theoretically unsound 
 but immediately possible, whereas our weak point lay in 
 the case being exadlly the reverse." 
 
 By one of those large and gradual changes of opinion 
 which are seldom traceable to any distind cause, the 
 middle class had just then become deeply discredited. 
 Matthew Arnold, after a lifetime spent in persistent efforts 
 to arouse it to a sense of its own shortcomings, had 
 abandoned the task in despair and given utterance to a 
 new creed, that of hope in the working class ; the creed 
 which he formulated in an address delivered to the Ips- 
 wich Working Men's College under the title Ecce conver- 
 timur ad Gentes. The change — so far as it was a change 
 — that had passed over Morris was somewhat parallel, 
 but led him towards utterance more violent in proportion 
 to his imaginative ardour and the impatience of his tem- 
 perament. 
 
 cc I have no very ardent interest," Arnold said in that 
 address, " in politics in their present state in this coun- 
 try. What interests me is English civilization ; and our 
 politics in their present state do not seem to me to have 
 much bearing upon that. Both the natural reason of the 
 thing and also the proof from practical experience seem 
 
8 4 THE LIFE OF [1882 
 
 to me to show the same thing ; that for modern civiliza- 
 tion some approach to equality is necessary, and that an 
 enormous inequality like ours is a hindrance to our civili- 
 zation. Our middle classes know neither man nor the 
 world ; they have no light, and can give none." So far 
 the two men are in complete agreement ; and though 
 Morris might have expressed himself in phrases less 
 lucidly temperate, there is even a curious and quite un- 
 premeditated likeness in the language which they use. 
 a Can the middle class regenerate themselves ? " Morris 
 asks, and answers the question essentially as Arnold an- 
 swered it. " At first sight," are his words, c< one would 
 say that a body of people so powerful, who have built up 
 the gigantic edifice of modern commerce, whose science, 
 invention, and energy have subdued the forces of nature 
 to serve their everyday purposes, and who guide the or- 
 ganization that keeps these natural powers in subjection 
 in a way almost miraculous ; at first sight one would say, 
 surely such a mighty mass of wealthy men could do any- 
 thing they please. And yet I doubt it. Why do not 
 you — and I — set about doing this to-morrow ? Because 
 we cannot." 
 
 " For twenty years," Arnold went on in the Ipswich 
 address, " I have been vainly urging this upon the middle 
 classes themselves. Now I urge it upon you. Carry it 
 forward yourselves, and insist on taking the middle class 
 with you." But Morris could not stand aloof to give 
 counsel ; he must needs be in the thick of the conflict. 
 A passage in a lecture delivered at the beginning of 1884 
 seems to express his attitude precisely in the way that he 
 felt and meant it. " The cause of art," he there says, cc is 
 the cause of the people. We well-to-do people, those 
 of us who love art, not as a toy, but as a thing necessary 
 to the life of man, have for our best work the raising of 
 the standard of life among the people. How can we of 
 
jet. 49] WILLIAM MORRIS 85 
 
 the middle classes, we the capitalists and our hangers-on, 
 help? By renouncing our class, and on all occasions 
 when antagonism rises up between the classes, casting in 
 our lot with the vi&ims; those who are condemned at 
 the best to lack of education, refinement, leisure, pleasure, 
 and renown ; and at the worst, to a life lower than that 
 of the most brutal of savages. There is no other way." 
 
 There can be little doubt that this passage, though 
 not written till after he had joined a Socialist organiza- 
 tion, expresses with great accuracy the frame of mind 
 which made him take the step of joining it. In addressing 
 middle-class audiences this was the offer which he dis- 
 tinctly made them : <c To these I offer a means," were his 
 words, repeated again and again on public platforms, 
 "of renouncing their class by joining the only body in 
 this country which puts forward constru&ive Socialism 
 as its programme." 
 
 That, if the privileged classes became merged in a 
 Third Estate, national equality and national unity would 
 be the result, is a thesis which may be variously argued 
 either in abstract logic or from the lessons of history. 
 But it is perhaps more to the point to ask how far it is 
 possible in the nature of things that a man should re- 
 nounce his class. Into that class he was born: in it he 
 has grown and lived : it environs him with the constant 
 pressure of an atmosphere : he clings to it and draws his 
 daily life out of it by a thousand filaments of inherited 
 tradition and acquired habit. To many it may seem that 
 Arnold, and not Morris, in this instance pointed out the 
 true path. Morris's own language with regard to the 
 matter, while not always stridtly consistent, often indicates 
 that he saw as clearly as any man the hopelessness of any 
 attempt to elevate the working class from without. He 
 never deceived himself into thinking that, by taking his 
 stand thus on the side of those whom he called the 
 
86 THE LIFE OF [1882 
 
 workers, he had ceased himself to be a professional man, a 
 hanger-on (for so he defined the term "professional man") 
 of the capitalist class. His hope was that at the touch of 
 an external impulse leaders among the workers them- 
 selves might arise, with whom or under whom he might 
 himself be permitted to work. It was only after years 
 of disappointment that he realized that the time for this 
 had not yet come. But his whole life bore witness to 
 the sincerity and self-sacrificing devotion with which he 
 followed the path he conceived to be that of his highest: 
 duty. 
 
 This renunciation of his own class at all events, so far 
 as such a thing could be actually done, presented itself 
 to him as a step which now more than ever would have, 
 so far as he himself was concerned, real value and signi- 
 ficance. His position in the eyes of the world was more 
 than respeftable; it might even be described, within limits, 
 as famous. He had a recognized place in the first rank 
 of living poets. He had no less recognized an authority 
 on all matters relating to the theory and pradice of the 
 decorative arts. He was a well-known and (in spite of 
 the temporary embarrassments which attended the first 
 year of the work at Merton Abbey) a prosperous manu- 
 facturer, whose goods travelled far, and carried their 
 own guarantee of excellence in design and workmanship. 
 He might speak of renunciation as one who had some- 
 thing not inconsiderable to renounce. Just at the mo- 
 ment when he was making up his mind to take some 
 decisive step, he was unanimously eledled an Honorary 
 Fellow of his College at Oxford ; a distinction which, 
 always rare, is generally reserved for old members who 
 have attained the highest official rank in their profession, 
 and implies a tribute to very special distindion in one 
 who is not a Bishop or a Privy Councillor. This honour 
 was conferred on him on the 13th of January, 1883. 
 
jet. 49] WILLIAM MORRIS 
 
 He had gone down to Bournemouth that day to see his 
 daughter. cc Such a pile of letters I found waiting me/' 
 he wrote to her on the 17th, after coming back to 
 London, <f some of them like those of David Copper- 
 field after he had become an author." That same day he 
 enrolled himself as a member of the Democratic Federa- 
 tion. 
 
 On his card of membership, which is signed by 
 H. H. Champion, he is described as " William Morris, 
 designer/' It was on his status as a workman that he 
 based his claim to admission into the fighting rank of a 
 working-class movement. The step, which in a sense 
 cut him definitely away from respectability, was in no 
 way a merely formal one. He took it with a full sense 
 of its import. cc I am truly glad," were his words, with 
 something of the grave joy of a convert, <c that I have 
 joined the only society I could find which is definitely 
 Socialistic." His support of the new movement, even 
 before he formally joined it, had not been confined to 
 theoretical sympathy. In the previous O&ober he had 
 sold the greater part of his valuable library, in order to 
 devote the proceeds to the furtherance of Socialism. 
 Though he was not exactly a bibliophile, many of these 
 treasures cost him a pang to part with, from the "De 
 Claris Mulieribus," which had been his first purchase 
 among the masterpieces of the early printers, down to 
 oddly printed collections of Sagas from the Skalaholt 
 Press, which he had acquired in Iceland. cc If the modern 
 books are unsaleable," he wrote to Ellis, <c perhaps you 
 would let me take them out after your valuation, as I 
 have no idea what they are worth to sell (though beastly 
 dear to buy), and though I hate them and should be glad 
 to be rid of them as far as pleasure is concerned, they 
 are of some use to me professionally — though by the 
 way I am not a professional man, but a tradesman." 
 
88 
 
 THE LIFE OF 
 
 [1882 
 
 A few letters to Bournemouth during the winter indi- 
 cate how his daily work went on, notwithstanding the 
 excitement of the new departure. "Yesterday/' he writes 
 on the 6th of December, <c I spent the day at the South 
 Kensington Museum. My opinion was wanted as to 
 the value of a set of textiles which old Canon Bock has 
 offered them : there were some very interesting pieces 
 among them : a noble piece of Sicilian woven stuff of a 
 pattern I haven't seen before ; a fine piece of 13th century 
 Syrian silk with (real) Arab writing in it : some frag- 
 ments of the very early cloths also, and a great quantity 
 of good 17th century patterns ; also a good collection of 
 printed goods from the 1 4th century till the beginnings 
 on the Wandle. I had also to decide as to whether the 
 Museum should buy three large pieces of tapestry (of 
 about 1530), but I refused them, as they were not really 
 good, and had been gammoned badly : also they were 
 too dear, £1,200 for the three and not worth more than 
 £4.00 at the most. I have made three new patterns for 
 embroidery, two small table-cloths, and one cushion." 
 
 And on the 19 th from Merton : 
 
 cc It is a lovely day here, though it was dark and thick 
 in town ; but I cannot get about the works, for the gout 
 has made another grab at me : it feels so queer to be 
 here and a kind of prisoner to the house : however I 
 have ordered the cab to be here at 6 to take me back to 
 Hammersmith, and I have plenty of small designing work 
 to do meantime. As to our printing, we are really not 
 quite straight yet : I am quite ashamed of it : however 
 they are doing Brother Rabbit successfully, and the 
 Anemone will go on now, and when we are once out of 
 this difficulty, I really think we shall have seen the worst 
 of it. Item, we are going to get our wheel set straight 
 during the Christmas holidays, so as not to stop work ; 
 the poor critter wants it very badly, for every now and 
 
jet. 49] WILLIAM MORRIS 89 
 
 then when there is not much water on, it really seems as 
 if he stopped to think, like a lazy boy turning a grind- 
 stone. Well, here is an end of my paper, and Mr. Barret 
 the wood-cutter come to see about cutting the design 
 I made down there — I shall call it Christchurch, not 
 Bourne mouth/ ' 
 
 On New Years Day he writes again: 
 
 " I duly went to Merton on Thursday, and found the 
 wheel by no means finished as they had promised : in- 
 deed it all looked like a boy who has pulled his watch to 
 pieces and can't put it together again ; however I expeft 
 to find all going to-day. I am going to sleep at Merton 
 to-night I fancy : because on Wednesday I have to go to 
 an Icelandic meeting at 12 (noon). There will be no 
 contested election here : I could have wished a real Radi- 
 cal could have been found to stand against Dilke, but 
 then the Tories would have run a man, and probably 
 got him in. Do you see the Pope is going to canonize 
 Sir Thomas More ? the Socialists ought to look up, if 
 that is to be their (late) reward.'' 
 
 More's " Utopia " had been one of the books he had 
 read aloud at Kelmscott during his melancholy autumn 
 holiday, and it had no inconsiderable influence over him ; 
 much more, it seems, than the professedly Socialistic 
 treatises — Marx's "Capital," Wallace's "Land Nationali- 
 zation," and the like — which he had been rather dis- 
 piritedly ploughing through. Socialists more versed in 
 abstract economic theories than himself were inclined to 
 accuse him of sentimentalism ; and in this, as in other 
 spheres of a6tivity, the demands of the romantic imagina- 
 tion were as imperious in him as ever. A fairly complete 
 list happens to be extant in a private diary of what he 
 read aloud at the Grange, where he still regularly spent 
 Sunday morning and one other evening every week, 
 during the year just ended. The only new book in the 
 
9 o THE LIFE OF WILLIAM MORRIS [1882 
 
 list is " Erewhon," one of the first and ablest of those 
 modern Utopias which were coming into fashion, and a 
 book that Morris greatly admired. The rest are all old 
 and tried friends ; Monte Cristo, The Three Musketeers, 
 Redgauntlet, David Copperfield, Great Expectations, 
 Tales of Old Japan, and on the last evening of the year 
 his earliest love of all, the Arabian Nights. 
 
CHAPTER XV 
 
 THE DEMOCRATIC FEDERATION 
 1883-1884 
 
 For the two years during which Morris was a member 
 of the Democratic Federation, there is little in his life to 
 chronicle which is not directly connected with that organi- 
 zation, and with his own development under its influence 
 into a more logical and uncompromising type of Socialist. 
 For reasons which are easy to appreciate, and of which 
 his own statement will be given later, he did not, either 
 when he joined it as an active member or afterwards, 
 abandon his own profession as a manufacturer, or his 
 own status as a man of letters. But it took up a prin- 
 cipal, and, as time went on, an absorbing share of his 
 time, thought, and energy. His production in pure 
 literature, whether prose or verse, fell for these years 
 wholly into abeyance : his production as a designer was 
 greatly curtailed ; and his management of his business 
 became more and more perfunctory. Fears were often 
 expressed by his friends that the effect on the business 
 might be grave, if not disastrous. But it had been solidly 
 founded, and was kept up by the skill and energy of his 
 managers, Mr. George Wardle and Messrs. F. and R. 
 Smith, who were now practically partners as well. Morris 
 himself was nearly always ready to respond to the call for 
 new designs that were really needed, and to apply his 
 strong common sense to questions that were submitted 
 for his decision. 
 
92 THE LIFE OF [1883 
 
 There are several indications that when he now plunged 
 into politics, he was on the brink of a new departure in 
 the field of romance. One may even conjecture the path 
 it would have taken. The heroic cycle of Iran had long 
 held in his mind a place next to those of Greece and 
 Scandinavia, " He loved everything Persian," Sir Edward 
 Burne-Jones says, c< including the wild confusion of their 
 chronology/' His profound study of Oriental design in 
 its application to pottery and textiles had recently rein- 
 forced his interest in the Persian epic. At the beginning 
 of 1883 he was deep in Mohl's French translation of the 
 Shah Nameh, and had begun a version of his own from 
 the French into English, of which a considerable fragment 
 was executed. But now, under a constraining sense of 
 social duty, this and all other literary plans were given 
 up by him for the service of the Federation. It was 
 nearly three years later before he o ice more returned to 
 imaginative work — though still with n political aim and 
 inspiration — in " The Dream of John Ball." In those three 
 years he had indeed produced a large volume of writing. 
 But it was not of a kind which possessed literary value, 
 or was meant for permanence. With the exception of 
 some dozen fragments of poetry, and as many ledlures on 
 the relation of art to social conditions, and to the life 
 of mankind, it was professedly and even ostentatiously 
 journalism. 
 
 An interesting light is thrown on his attitude of mind 
 at this time by a letter written in January to Mr. Man- 
 son, his old colleague on the executive of the National 
 Liberal League. It was in answer to some question 
 which Mr. Manson had put to him in connexion with 
 the exhibition of Rossetti's pictures and drawings which 
 was then being held at the Burlington Fine Arts Club. 
 Rossetti himself had died in the previous April. 
 
 <c I can't say," he writes, " how it was that Rossetti 
 
jet. 49] WILLIAM MORRIS 93 
 
 took no interest in politics ; but so it was : of course he 
 was quite Italian in his general turn of thought ; though 
 I think he took less interest in Italian politics than in 
 English, in spite of his knowing several of the leading 
 patriots personally, Saffi for instance. The truth is he 
 cared for nothing but individual and personal matters ; 
 chiefly of course in relation to art and literature, but he 
 would take abundant trouble to help any one person who 
 was in distress of mind or body; but the evils of any 
 mass of people he couldn't bring his mind to bear upon. 
 I suppose in short it needs a person of hopeful mind to 
 take disinterested notice of politics, and Rossetti was 
 certainly not hopeful." 
 
 The difference here touched, whether or not the expla- 
 nation offered of it be right, was real and deep. Morris 
 had himself always been one of the people to whom 
 personal matters bear far less than their normal share in 
 life. He was interested in things much more than in 
 people. He had the capacity for loyal friendships and 
 for deep affections ; but even of these one might almost 
 say that they did not penetrate to the central part of him. 
 The thing done, the story, or the building, or the pidure, 
 or whatever it might be, was what he cared about in the 
 work of his contemporaries and friends no less than in 
 that of other ages or countries: and in his mind these 
 things seem to have been quite independent of the story- 
 teller, or the architect, or the painter, and not merely 
 substantive things, but one might almost say substantive 
 personalities. So too in the ordinary concerns of life he 
 was strangely incurious of individuals. On one side this 
 quality of mind took the form of an absolute indifference 
 to gossip and scandal, and a capacity of working with the 
 most unsympathetic or disagreeable colleagues, so long as 
 they were helping on the particular work in hand. On 
 another side it resulted in an almost equally marked 
 
94 THE LIFE OF [1883 
 
 inconsiderateness. He sometimes seemed to have the 
 aloofness of some great natural force. For sympathy in 
 distress, for soothing in trouble, it was not to him that 
 one would have gone. The lot of the poor, as a class, 
 when he thought of it, had always lain heavily on his 
 spirit. "Indeed, the poor man is always much at the 
 mercy of the rich " — those noble and melancholy words, 
 used just a century before by Johnson to Boswell, express 
 a feeling which was at the root of all Morris's social 
 dodtrine. But the sufferings of individuals often only 
 moved him to a certain impatience. Many years before, 
 Rossetti, in one of those flashes of hard insight that made 
 him so terrible a friend, had said of him, " Did you ever 
 notice that Top never gives a penny to a beggar?" In- 
 considerate and even unscrupulous as Rossetti was him- 
 self in some of the larger affairs of life, this particular 
 instindt of generosity was one which never failed him. 
 For the individual in distress — were it a friend in diffi- 
 culties, or some unknown poor woman on the street — he 
 was always ready to empty his own pockets, and plunge 
 deeply into those of his friends. Morris's virtues were 
 of a completely different type. Scrupulously just in his 
 dealings, incapable of driving a hard bargain, liberal up 
 to and even beyond his means in the support of an objedt 
 which had gained his sympathy, he had not in his nature 
 that touch of lavishness that gives a human warmth to 
 generosity, and may elevate even inconsiderate profusion 
 into a moral excellence. That habit of magnificence, 
 which to the Greek mind was the crown of virtues, was 
 Rossetti's most remarkable quality. In the nature of 
 Morris it had no place. <C I am bourgeois, you know, 
 and therefore without the point of honour," he had 
 written many years before to Madox Brown in a moment 
 of real self-appreciation ; and his virtues were those of 
 the bourgeois class — industrious, honest, fair-minded up 
 
jet. 49] WILLIAM MORRIS 95 
 
 to their lights, but unexpansive and unsympathetic — so 
 far as the touch of genius did not transform him into 
 something quite unique and incalculable. 
 
 There is a pleasant sketch of one of his frequent visits 
 to Paris, in company with Mr. Armstrong, on the affairs of 
 the South Kensington Museum, in a letter to his daughter 
 at the end of that January. They crossed together 
 on a stormy moonlit night, " so that we could see the 
 waves at any rate, and they were very fine indeed. We 
 slept on the road to Paris after a fashion, but it was so 
 cold that it was a sort of dog-sleep, and the inn-room 
 and wood-fire and coffee and rolls were sweet to us when 
 we got there. Armstrong took me to dine at a simple 
 place he knew, where we were welcome and paid but 
 moderately : by the way, seeing goujons on the bill, I 
 insisted on having them, and very good they were. The 
 trees in the Tuileries gardens have suffered very much 
 even since we were there : it is sad to see, for I remem- 
 ber when I first came to Paris and was high up aloft with 
 Aunt Henrietta at Meurice's they were so thick they 
 looked as if you could walk on their tops. We were 
 very busy over our proper business both days, but 
 managed to see the Cluny, being close by; also a new 
 Museum of casts of Gothic sculpture at the Trocadero, 
 very interesting. As to the sale we were beat, a sort of 
 French S.K.M. bought the things over our heads, but 
 Armstrong thinks he can borrow the best book of the 
 pattern books, which was very good, had a lot of old 
 Indian and Persian printed cloths in it." 
 
 Of Morris's first appearance at a meeting of the Demo- 
 cratic Federation the following account is given by Mr. 
 Scheu : 
 
 cc In the early winter months of 1883 ^ e Democratic 
 Federation had arranged some meetings at the West- 
 minster Palace Chambers. I attended the first of those 
 
96 THE LIFE OF [1883 
 
 meetings (I forget the exacft date), Mr. Hyndman in the 
 chair. The order of the day was the passing of some 
 resolutions on the question of education, normal working- 
 day, and the housing of the working classes. The busi- 
 ness had scarcely been started when Banner, who sat 
 behind me, passed me a slip of paper, c The third man 
 to your right is William Morris.' I had read of but 
 never seen Morris before, and I looked at once in the 
 direction given. I was struck by Morris's fine face, his 
 earnestness, the half searching, half dreamy look of his 
 eyes, and his plain and comely dress. 
 
 cc When the resolution re artisans' dwellings was pro- 
 posed, I rose and took exception to the notion that only 
 artisans needed rational dwellings, and proposed to alter 
 the wording into c people's dwellings.' The amendment 
 was frowned upon by the chair, but when Morris got up 
 and seconded it with a few sympathetic words, it was 
 carried almost unanimously." 
 
 That random shot — for such perhaps it was — struck 
 home : for it was characteristic of Morris to welcome 
 with almost exaggerated gratitude any remark from a 
 stranger that pointed towards the same conclusions to 
 which his own lonely thoughts had led him. The amend- 
 ment was meant to protest against limiting the move- 
 ment in favour of better dwellings to the class of skilled 
 workmen. But to Morris the necessity of rational dwell- 
 ings for the rich no less than the poor was a primary 
 article of belief. cc I have at least resped for the dwellers 
 in the tub of Diogenes ; indeed I don't look upon it as 
 so bad a house after all. I have seen worse houses to 
 let for ^700 a year." So he said afterwards with perfed 
 sincerity, and the housing of the rich was to him one of 
 the most distressing features of modern civilization. 
 
 At the same meeting <c Rowland, for whom we voted 
 for our School Board," Morris writes, " was there, and 
 
jet. 49] WILLIAM MORRIS 
 
 97 
 
 spoke hugely to my liking ; advocated street-preaching 
 of our do&xines as the real practical method: wisely to 
 my mind, since those who suffer (more than we, or they, 
 can tell) from society as it is, are so many, and those 
 who have conceived any hope that it may be changed are 
 so few." This belief, to which he clung against hope 
 for several years, had momentous consequences in his 
 life; for in the task of street-preaching outdoors, and 
 work equivalent to street-preaching indoors, he broke 
 down his health, and to some extent wore away the keen 
 edge of his mind. But for the moment the new task 
 seemed to lend him additional vigour. A month later 
 there is a glimpse of him in the first flush of his enter- 
 prise in an entry from a private diary : 
 
 " Feb. 22. At Ned's. Top came in to breakfast as 
 usual on Sundays : was extremely brilliant as soon as he 
 had shaken off a little drooping of spirits owing to bad 
 news about Jenny : was very angry against Seddon for 
 replacing old Hammersmith Church ( c a harmless silly 
 old thing ') by such an excrescence. He was bubbling 
 over with Karl Marx, whom he had just begun to read 
 in French. He praised Robert Owen immensely. He 
 had been giving an address to a Clerkenwell Radical 
 Club — found the members 'eager to learn but dreadfully 
 ignorant.' c All Socialists are agreed as to education/ 
 Finely explosive against railways. Some imitation- 
 Morris wall-paper was c a mangy gherkin on a horse-dung 
 ground/ Spent the evening at Top's — a long talk on 
 birds : T/s knowledge of them very extensive : can go 
 on for hours about their habits: but especially about 
 their form/ 1 
 
 About the same time Morris wrote to Mr. T. C. 
 Horsfall, who had made his acquaintance four years 
 earlier in connexion with the formation of the Man- 
 chester Art Museum : 
 
 II. H 
 
98 THE LIFE OF [1883 
 
 cc I think on reflection that I have not much to ada 
 to what I have written in my little book " (" Hopes and 
 Fears for Art "). cc I have, as you will note, guarded 
 myself against the imputation of wishing to get rid 
 of all rough work. I would only get rid as much as 
 possible of all nasty and stupid work, and what is left 
 I would divide as equitably as might be among all 
 classes. 
 
 cc You see it was not necessary in my lectures to tell 
 people that I am in principle a Socialist, and would be 
 so in practice if there should ever in my lifetime turn up 
 an occasion for action : add to this fact that I have a re- 
 ligious hatred to all war and violence, and you have the 
 reason for my speaking and writing on subjects of art. 
 I mean that I have done it as seed for the goodwill and 
 justice that may make it possible for the next great re- 
 volution, which will be a social one, to work itself out 
 without violence being an essential part of it." 
 
 But economy of truth was never a thing possible for 
 Morris, and any advance in his own views was reflected 
 immediately in his public as much as in his private 
 utterances. On the 6th of March he gave an address 
 on cc Art, Wealth, and Riches " at the Manchester Royal 
 Institution, in which the Socialist doctrine was so pro- 
 nounced as to meet with much hostile criticism. On 
 the theory of art people were willing to hear him gladly, 
 much as they would hear a preacher from the pulpit on 
 the theory of religion. They would even to some de- 
 gree consent to translate his doctrine into practice in the 
 decoration of their houses. But when he attacked the 
 structure and basis of the life they led in these houses, 
 there were murmurs of alarm and resentment. <c Does 
 not that raise another question than one of mere art ? " 
 they asked in perplexity or indignation. To a letter in 
 the Manchester Examiner which put the question in 
 
jet. 49] WILLIAM MORRIS 
 
 99 
 
 these specific words Morris took the opportunity* ^o 
 reply thus : 
 
 " It was the purpose of my le&ure to raise another 
 question than one of mere art. I specially wished to 
 point out that the question of popular art was a social 
 question, involving the happiness or misery of the greater 
 part of the community. The absence of popular art 
 from modern times is more disquieting and grievous to 
 bear for this reason than for any other, that it betokens 
 that fatal division of men into the cultivated and the 
 degraded classes which competitive commerce has bred 
 and fosters ; popular art has no chance of a healthy life, 
 or, indeed, of a life at all, till we are on the way to fill 
 up this terrible gulf between riches and poverty. Doubt- 
 less many things will go to filling it up, and if art must 
 be one of those things, let it go. What business have 
 we with art at all unless all can share it ? I am not 
 afraid but that art will rise from the dead, whatever else 
 lies there. For, after all, what is the true end and aim 
 of all politics and all commerce ? Is it not to bring 
 about a state of things in which all men may live at 
 peace and free from over-burdensome anxiety, provided 
 with work which is pleasant to them and produces re- 
 sults useful to their neighbours ? 
 
 " It may well be a burden to the conscience of an 
 honest man who lives a more manlike life to think of 
 the innumerable lives which are spent in toil unrelieved 
 by hope and uncheered by praise ; men who might as 
 well, for all the good they are doing to their neighbours 
 by their work, be turning a crank with nothing at the 
 end of it ; but this is the fate of those who are working 
 at the bidding of blind competitive commerce, which 
 still persists in looking at itself as an end, and not as a 
 means. 
 
 " It has been this burden on my conscience, I do in 
 
ioo THE LIFE OF [1883 
 
 all sincerity believe, which has urged me on to speak of 
 popular art in Manchester and elsewhere. 1 could never 
 forget that in spite of all drawbacks my work is little 
 else than pleasure to me ; that under no conceivable cir- 
 cumstances would I give it up even if I could. Over 
 and over again have I asked myself why should not 
 my lot be the common lot. My work is simple work 
 enough ; much of it, nor that the least pleasant, any 
 man of decent intelligence could do, if he could but get 
 to care about the work and its results. Indeed I have 
 been ashamed when I have thought of the contrast be- 
 tween my happy working hours and the unpraised, un- 
 rewarded, monotonous drudgery which most men are 
 condemned to. Nothing shall convince me that such 
 labour as this is good or necessary to civilization." 
 
 Of Merton Abbey and his work going on there he writes 
 to his daughter on the 28 th of February. The tapestry 
 of the Goose-Girl, from a design by Mr. Walter Crane, 
 was the first figure-subjeft executed at Merton on the 
 high-warp loom. It was succeeded by the Flora and 
 Pomona pieces, in which the figures were designed by 
 Burne- Jones. 
 
 " At Merton there are some daffodils out already. 
 The almond tree is blossoming there beautifully: some 
 of these fine days the place has looked pretty, the water 
 sparkling among the twigs. We are getting tidy now, 
 but haven't quite cleared up about the big filtering bed, 
 which still wants something doing to it, as the tail was 
 red with madder the other day. We are not getting on 
 quite as fast as we should with the printing ; it is very 
 tough work getting everything in due order, the cloths 
 seem to want so much doing to them before they can 
 be printed, and then so much doing to them after they 
 are printed. We have had a grand cleaning of the 
 blue Persian carpet at Merton. My word, wasn't it 
 
jet. 50] WILLIAM MORRIS 
 
 101 
 
 dirty: caked with dirt: it looks very much better, the 
 pattern being quite plain to see except just at the end for 
 about a foot. I was frightened though at first : for after 
 we first put it into the river it cockled up like a sheet of 
 crumpled paper, the cotton warp shrinking with the wet. 
 I thought my £80 had gone down the Wandle : but all 
 came right when it was dry. In about a fortnight we 
 shall have finished the Goose-Girl tapestry: Uncle Ned 
 has done me two lovely figures for tapestry, but I have 
 got to design a background for them; I shall probably 
 bring that down next time I come for my holiday task. 
 Tell dear May that I have devoted about twenty minutes 
 to the lace — it is a drawback to have to be always wash- 
 ing one's hands for a fidgety person like me. Neither 
 have I done much to the Shah Nameh: you see the ledture 
 has swallowed up my literary time. ,, 
 
 Under the pressure of opposition which, at Manches- 
 ter and elsewhere, he was now beginning to feel, a harden- 
 ing of his tone about this time begins to be perceptible. 
 " I am tired of being mealy-mouthed," he breaks out in 
 a letter. In April he was ledturing regularly, cc preaching 
 my sermon " as he calls it, in different parts of London, 
 and becoming more plain-spoken in each fresh draft of 
 his message. In May he was put, rather against his will, 
 on the executive of the Democratic Federation ; cc so I 
 am in for more work. However I don't like belonging 
 to a body without knowing what they are doing. With- 
 out feeling very sanguine about their doings, they seem 
 certainly to mean something ; money is chiefly lacking, 
 as usual/' 
 
 To meet this lack of money among a small and strug- 
 gling group of enthusiasts, the drain on his own resources 
 was already heavy, and became heavier as time went on. 
 u You have no revolution on hand on which to spend 
 your money," he wrote to Ellis in the same week. " By 
 
102 THE LIFE OF [1883 
 
 the way," he adds, suddenly turning to another and an 
 earlier interest, c< the May-fly does not visit Wandle: they 
 are eating the alder and the cocktail now. Wardle gut 
 a fish (not in our water) on Monday evening, a 2 lb., I 
 heard." Himself now he found no time for fishing or 
 for any relaxation. The absorption of his time by his 
 new work amounted to two full working-days, besides 
 odd evenings, out of every week. " I haven't had two 
 consecutive hours to call my own since I saw you three 
 weeks ago," he writes to Mrs. Burne- Jones later in the 
 summer ; c< my time has been a mere heap of chopped 
 straw." 
 
 So far as concerns his attitude at this point towards 
 politics and the ideas of that middle class which he had 
 not yet renounced, two long and clearly reasoned letters 
 written this summer to Mr. C. E. Maurice give his 
 thought fully and frankly. 
 
 <c Kelmscott House, 
 
 " June 22, 1883. 
 
 " Dear Mr. Maurice, 
 
 " I think you might be able to help afriend of mine 
 with advice in the following case: A poor woman comes 
 to her asking for a ticket for her son for the Consump- 
 tive Hospital: son obviously ill, but not with consump- 
 tion : woman herself ill, sore throat and out-of-sorts: 
 husband ill also : very bad smell in the house ; the rent- 
 colle&or or landlord, when asked to mend matters by the 
 tenant, won't do anything; won't even give his address; 
 inspe&or when written to by tenant don't answer : Can 
 you tell me who is the proper inspector or board to apply 
 to ? and forgive my troubling you on such a simple 
 question. 
 
 " I should have been glad to have continued our con- 
 
AT. 50] WILLIAM MORRIS 103 
 
 versation last Friday night ; as I so much desire to convert 
 all disinterested people of good will to what I should call 
 adlive and general Socialism, and to have their help : I 
 think that you, like myself, have really been a Socialist for 
 a long time, and I know you have done your best, as you 
 would be sure to do, to carry out your views. For my 
 part I used to think that one might further real Socialistic 
 progress by doing what one could on the lines of ordinary 
 middle-class Radicalism: I have been driven of late into 
 the conclusion that I was mistaken ; that Radicalism is on 
 the wrong line, so to say, and will never develope into 
 anything more than Radicalism : in fad that it is made 
 for and by the middle classes and will always be under 
 the control of rich capitalists: they will have no objection 
 to its political development, if they think they can stop 
 it there : but as to real social changes, they will not allow 
 them if they can help it : you may see almost any day 
 such phrases as "this is the proper way to stop the 
 spread of Socialism 99 in the Liberal papers, the writer of 
 the phrase never having taken the trouble to find out 
 what Socialism meant, and also choosing to ignore the 
 discontent, dumb indeed for the most part, which is 
 widely spread even in England. Meantime I can see no 
 use in people having political freedom unless they use it 
 as an instrument for leading reasonable and manlike lives ; 
 no good even in education if, when they are educated, 
 people have only slavish work to do, and have to live 
 lives too much beset with sordid anxiety for them to be 
 able to think and feel with the more fortunate people 
 who produced art and poetry and great thought. This 
 release from slavery it is clear cannot come to people so 
 long as they are subjected to the bare subsistence wages 
 which are a necessity of competitive commerce ; and I 
 cannot help thinking that the workmen will be soon find- 
 ing out that for themselves : it is certain that Henry 
 
io 4 THE LIFE OF [1883 
 
 George's book has been received in this country and in 
 America as a new Gospel: I believe that Socialism is ad- 
 vancing, and will advance more and more as education 
 spreads, and so believing, find my duty clear to do my 
 best to further its advance, and in the same time, in what: 
 poor way I can, to soften the ruggedness, and refine the 
 coarseness which centuries of oppression have hammered 
 into it, so to say. 
 
 " A word about the Democratic Federation : as far 
 as I know it is the only a6live Socialist organization in 
 England : under the above mentioned circumstances 
 therefore I found myself bound to join it, although I had 
 heard beforehand (to speak plainly) that it was a sort of 
 Tory drag to take the scent off the fox. From all I can 
 hear I believe that to be a calumny : or, to speak English, 
 one of those curious lies for which no one seems respon- 
 sible, but which stick very tight to the objed they are 
 thrown at. However that may be, I cannot see how a 
 Society which has declared openly for Socialism, including 
 Land Nationalization, can serve the Tory cause, what- 
 ever the Tory intention may be : for the rest, from 
 what I can see of their proceedings the Executive seem 
 to me to mean work ; and if their opinions hurt the 
 Liberal party (where is it by the way ?) it is the fault 
 of the Liberal party for allowing itself to stiffen into 
 Whiggery or practical Toryism, as it seems to me it is 
 fast doing. 
 
 cc I won't make any excuses for this long letter, as I 
 know you are deeply interested in the matter, and I be- 
 lieve your uprightness of thought will see through my 
 clumsy sentences into what I have in my mind. 
 
 a I am, dear Mr. Maurice, 
 Cf Yours faithfully, 
 
 <c William Morris." 
 
jet. 50] WILLIAM MORRIS 105 
 
 " Kelmscott House, 
 "July ist, 1883. 
 
 " Dear Mr. Maurice, 
 
 "I am sitting down to write my promised letter 
 to you, but to begin with find it somewhat difficult to 
 do more than define my own position a little more than 
 I did in my last. You see I think we differ to start 
 with in this, that you think that the present system of 
 Society has certain hitches in it ; certain wrongs result- 
 ing from blunders persisted in, till they have become very 
 difficult to deal with, but which hitches and blunders are 
 removable, and when removed will leave us a society 
 which can be kept straight by careful attention to the 
 general duties of good citizenship. I confess I go much 
 further than that : true it is that I cannot help trying to 
 remove obvious anomalies or helping what I can to 
 palliate the effeds of the obstinate blunders which we 
 both see, but I do so with little hope, because I believe 
 that the whole basis of Society, with its contrasts of rich 
 and poor, is incurably vicious : I might be content that 
 the change which I think must come about before this 
 can be righted should be a gradual one — or say I must 
 be content ; but I do not see that those who are at the 
 head of the political advance have any intention of making 
 a real change in the social basis : for them it seems a part 
 of the necessary and eternal order of things that the pre- 
 sent supply and demand Capitalist system should last for 
 ever; though the system of citizen and chattel slave under 
 which the ancient civilizations lived, which no doubt 
 once seemed also necessary and eternal, had to give place, 
 after a long period of violence and anarchy, to the feudal 
 system of seigneur and serf; which in its turn, though 
 once thought necessary and eternal, has been swept away 
 in favour of our present contract system between rich and 
 poor. Of course I don't do you the injustice to suppose 
 
106 THE LIFE OF [1883 
 
 that you defend the finality of any system, but I am quite 
 clear that the ordinary Radical of to-day does do so, and 
 there I join issue with him. 
 
 <c Also of course, I do not believe in the world being 
 saved by any system, — I only assert the necessity of at- 
 tacking systems grown corrupt, and no longer leading 
 anywhither : that to my mind is the case with the present 
 system of capital and labour : as all my ledtures assert, I 
 have personally been gradually driven to the conclusion 
 that art has been handcuffed by it, and will die out of 
 civilization if the system lasts. That of itself does to me 
 carry with it the condemnation of the whole system, and 
 I admit has been the thing which has drawn my attention 
 to the subject in general : but furthermore in looking into 
 matters social and political I have but one rule, that in 
 thinking of the condition of any body of men I should 
 ask myself, € How could you bear it yourself? what 
 would you feel if you were poor against the system 
 under which you live ? ' I have always been uneasy when 
 I had to ask myself that question, and of late years I have 
 had to ask it so often, that I have seldom had it out of 
 my mind : and the answer to it has more and more made 
 me ashamed of my own position, and more and more 
 made me feel that if I had not been born rich or well-to- 
 do I should have found my position ##endurable, and 
 should have been a mere rebel against what would have 
 seemed to me a system of robbery and injustice. Nothing 
 can argue me out of this feeling, which I say plainly is 
 a matter of religion to me : the contrasts of rich and 
 poor are unendurable and ought not to be endured by 
 either rich or poor. Now it seems to me that, feeling 
 this, I am bound to a6t for the destruction of the system 
 which seems to me mere oppression and obstruction ; such 
 a system can only be destroyed, it seems to me, by the 
 united discontent of numbers; isolated ads of a few 
 
jet. 50] WILLIAM MORRIS 107 
 
 persons of the middle and upper classes seeming to me 
 (as I have said before) quite powerless against it : in 
 other words the antagonism of classes, which the system 
 has bred, is the natural and necessary instrument of its 
 destruction. My aim therefore being to spread discon- 
 tent among all classes, I feel myself bound to join any 
 organization whose object seemed to me really to further 
 this aim : nor in doing so should I be much troubled by 
 consideration of who the leaders of such an organization 
 might be, always supposing that one believes them genuine 
 in their support of certain principles. It has always 
 seemed to me that the worship of leaders has been a sign 
 of the iifelessness of ordinary Radicalism of late, and that 
 opinion has received fresh confirmation in my mind by 
 last year's events in Ireland and Egypt (especially the 
 latter, where the Liberal c leaders ' 1 led 9 the party into 
 mere Jingoism). 
 
 u But further I earnestly wish that the middle classes, 
 to whom hitherto I have personally addressed myself, 
 should look to all these matters, and become discontented 
 also, as they certainly should be, since they themselves 
 suffer from the same system which oppresses the poor ; 
 their lives made barren and dull by it ; their hopes for 
 a higher standard of life repressed : besides I am quite 
 sure that the change which will overthrow our present 
 system will come sooner or later : on the middle classes 
 to a great extent it depends whether it will come peace- 
 ably or violently. If they can only learn the uselessness 
 of mere overplus money, the poisonousness of luxury to 
 all civilization, they will not be so likely to cry out 
 c confiscation and robbery and injustice ' at a system 
 which, while it proposes to give to every man what he 
 really needs, will have no call to take from any man 
 what he can really use : in short, what we of the middle 
 classes have to do, if we can, is to show by our lives what 
 
108 THE LIFE OF [1883 
 
 is the proper type of a useful citizen, the type into which 
 all classes should melt at last. I remember a little time 
 ago meeting a clever man in a train who enlarged (with- 
 out letting me get a word in edgewise) on the woes of 
 the middle class, and how they suffered in comparison 
 with the pampered working classes. I am sorry to say 
 that I was not ready enough to say to him what I after- 
 wards thought : c my friend, if you would only allow 
 yourself to become a member of this pampered working 
 class, then would all your woes be at an end, by your 
 own showing.' His line of argument is common enough, 
 and is founded on the assumption that one class must 
 be masters of the other: but to my mind no man is 
 good enough to be any one's master without injuring 
 himself at least, whatever he does for the servant. Well, 
 I don't know if I have explained myself at all ; I dare- 
 say I haven't, but I have told you of certain things 
 which were on my mind ; and you will at least see 
 that I am your ally in trying to deal with the lives of our 
 own class. 
 
 "I much agree with what you say about the shop- 
 keeping class, and think with you that they have been 
 very unjustly scolded at for a position which they cannot 
 help, and which is I know very often hard enough for 
 them: whatever political grievances they lack, I think they 
 have a social grievance heavy enough : for instance, the 
 more refined classes do usually assume in their dealings 
 with them that they will as a matter of course cheat the 
 buyer, though all the while the buyer is eager for what 
 he calls a ' bargain,' i.e., that he should cheat the seller. 
 Doesn't this bring home to us all the waste and disgrace 
 which is the essence of our present system of Commercial 
 War? 
 
 " Well, I have spun you a very long yarn, and have 
 not attempted to answer your objections diredlly; because 
 
jet. 50] WILLIAM MORRIS 109 
 
 I saw from your letter that you could not be expedted 
 to join in such a Society as ours at present, though I 
 cannot help thinking that you one day will take some 
 such step. 
 
 " Meantime I have begun a little essay on the subjeft 
 you were good enough to suggest to me : when it is 
 finished I will send it you, and if you approve of it I 
 would read it somewhere and be prepared to answer 
 further questions on the subjedl — which however I can- 
 not help feeling will eventually lead us back to Socialism 
 by another road. 
 
 " By the way a friend sent me Hampstead paper 
 cuttings, containing 1st, an irate letter from some one 
 who was ' touched up ' by my ledure ; and 2nd, a very 
 handsome answer to him by yourself, for which I thank 
 you heartily, especially as it made clear to me that you 
 quite understood what I had been saying on that occa- 
 sion. You must remember by the way again that I was 
 sent by the Democratic Federation to ledhire there ; so 
 I thought I was adling within my rights in distributing 
 their circular, and speaking for them. 
 
 rt I am, dear Mr. Maurice, 
 cc Yours faithfully, 
 
 " William Morris." 
 
 In more touching and intimate words he wrote on the 
 2 1st of August to Mrs. Burne- Jones, who had made a 
 renewed effort to urge him back to writing poetry : 
 
 u I am touched by your kind anxiety about my 
 poetry ; but you see, my dear, there is first of all my 
 anxiety, which I am bound to confess has made a sad 
 coward of me ; and then, though I admit that I am a 
 conceited man, yet I really don't think anything I have 
 done (when I consider it as I should another man's work) 
 of any value except to myself : except as showing my 
 
no THE LIFE OF [1883 
 
 sympathy with history and the like. Poetry goes with 
 the hand-arts I think, and like them has now become 
 unreal : the arts have got to die, what is left of them, 
 before they can be born again. You know my views 
 on the matter; I apply them to myself as well as to 
 others. This would not, I admit, prevent my writing 
 poetry any more than it prevents my doing my pattern 
 work, because the mere personal pleasure of it urges one 
 to the work ; but it prevents my looking at it as a 
 sacred duty, and the grief aforesaid is too strong and 
 disquieting to be overcome by a mere inclination to do 
 what I know is unimportant work. Meantime the pro- 
 paganda gives me work to do, which, unimportant as it 
 seems, is part of a great whole which cannot be lost, and 
 that ought to be enough for me." 
 
 Within the ranks of the Democratic Federation mean- 
 while, which had set out so gaily to conquer working- 
 class opinion and use it as a lever against the established 
 order of things, disruptive tendencies were already show- 
 ing themselves, and its middle-class leaders were already 
 beginning to mistrust one another. u I am like enough 
 to have some trouble over my propagandist work," 
 Morris writes at the end of August, t€ let alone that I am 
 in for a many lectures : for small as our body is, we are 
 not without dissensions in it. Some of the more ardent 
 disciples look upon Hyndman as too opportunist, and 
 there is truth in that; he is sanguine of speedy change 
 happening somehow, and is inclined to intrigue and the 
 making of a party ; towards which end compromise is 
 needed, and the carrying people who don't really agree 
 with us as far as they will go. As you know, I am not 
 sanguine, and think the aim of Socialists should be the 
 founding of a religion, towards which end compromise 
 is no use, and we only want to have those with us who 
 will be with us to the end. But then again, if the 
 
JET, 50] 
 
 WILLIAM MORRIS 
 
 1 in 
 
 zealots don't take care they will blow the whole thing 
 to the winds ; all the more as the religious or theological 
 difficulty is on us, or threatening to be so. In the midst 
 of all this I find myself drifting into the disgraceful 
 position of a moderator and patcher up, which is much 
 against my inclination. 
 
 cf Meantime it is obvious that the support to be looked 
 for for constructive Socialism from the working classes 
 at present is nought. Who can wonder, as things now 
 are, when the lower classes are really lower ? Of vague 
 discontent and a spirit of revenge for the degradation in 
 which they are kept there is plenty I think, but that 
 seems all. What we want is real leaders themselves 
 working men, and content to be so till classes are 
 abolished. But you see when a man has gifts for that 
 kind of thing he finds himself tending to rise out of his 
 class before he has begun to think of class politics as a 
 matter of principle, and too often he is just simply c got 
 at ' by the governing classes, not formally, but by cir- 
 cumstances I mean. Education is the word doubtless ; 
 but then in comes the commercial system and defends 
 itself against that in a terrible unconscious way with the 
 struggle for bread, and lack of leisure, and squalid 
 housing — and there we go, round and round the circle 
 still." 
 
 It was not only the business of moderating and patch- 
 ing up that was now beginning, but the equally endless 
 task of explaining to a quite light-hearted and careless 
 world distinctions which perpetually became more crucial 
 as their scope was narrowed, but which those beyond 
 the circle could never be induced to see as distinctions 
 at all. fc The manifesto spoken of in to-day's Daily 
 News," he wearily writes, cc is not ours ; nor is it Social 
 Democratic, which is what we are, but Anarchist. We 
 consider them dangerous ; for you see they have no pro- 
 
ii2 THE LIFE OF [1883 
 
 gramme but destruction, whereas we are reconstructive. 
 People in general are quite ignorant of the whole matter." 
 
 At the beginning of September he wrote the first of 
 those hymns of the new movement which were issued 
 under the title of <c Chants for Socialists." The fine and 
 stirring verses, entitled "The Day is Coming/' are in- 
 cluded in the volume of <c Poems by the Way." In 
 sending a copy of the newly-written poem to Mrs. 
 Burne-Jones he once more recurs to the objection, urged 
 by her and by many of those whose sympathy he sought 
 to enlist, that education was the primary necessity, and 
 that it was hopeless to attempt to reconstruct society 
 with the existing materials. 
 
 " As to the D. F., you need not be anxious about 
 me. I went into the affair quite with my eyes open, 
 and suspecting worse things of it than are likely to 
 happen : for you understand I by no means suppose 
 Hyndman or any of the leaders not to be in earnest, 
 though I may not always agree with them. I naturally 
 find it harder work to understand the subject of Socialism 
 in detail now I am alongside it, and often get beaten in 
 argument when I know all the same I am really in the 
 right : but of course this only means more study. 
 Every one who has thought over the matter must feel 
 your dilemma about education ; but think of many not 
 uneducated people that you know, and you will I am 
 sure see that education will not cure people of the 
 grossest social selfishness and tyranny unless Socialistic 
 principles form part of it. Meantime I am sure it is 
 right, whatever the apparent consequences may be, to 
 stir up the lower classes (damn the word) to demand a 
 higher standard of life for themselves, not merely for 
 themselves or for the sake of the material comfort it will 
 bring, but for the good of the whole world and the re- 
 generation of the conscience of man : and this stirring 
 
jet. 50] WILLIAM MORRIS 
 
 "3 
 
 up is part of the necessary education which must in good 
 truth go before the reconstruction of society : but I 
 repeat that without laying before people this reconstruc- 
 tion, our education will but breed tyrants and cowards, 
 big, little and least, down to the smallest who can screw 
 out money from standing by to see another man work- 
 ing for him. 
 
 " The one thing I want you to be clear about is that I 
 cannot help a6ling in the matter, and associating myself 
 with any body which has the root of the matter ; and you 
 know, and it may ease your kind heart respecting me, 
 that those who are in the thick of it, and trying to do 
 something, are not likely to feel so much of the hope de- 
 ferred which hangs about the cause as onlookers do." 
 
 In the same spirit, though from a somewhat different 
 position, and in a rather more militant tone, he wrote 
 about the same time to Mr. Horsfall : 
 
 " I have long felt sure that commercialism must be 
 attacked at the root before we can be on the road for those 
 improvements in life which you and I so much desire. 
 A society which is founded on the system of compelling 
 all well-to-do people to live on making the greatest 
 possible profit out of the labour of others, must be wrong. 
 For it means the perpetuating the division of society into 
 civilized and uncivilized classes : I am far from being an 
 anarchist, but even anarchy is better than this, which is in 
 fa6l anarchy and despotism mixed : if there is no hope of 
 conquering this — let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we 
 die. 
 
 cc Of course I do not discuss these matters with you or 
 any person of good will in any bitterness of spirit : but 
 there are people with whom it is hard to keep one's 
 temper; such as the philistine middle-class Radical ; who 
 think, or pretend to, that now at last all is for the best in 
 this best of all possible worlds." 
 
 11. 1 
 
1 1 4 THE LIFE OF [1883 
 
 " I am working at leftures and chintz-patterns hard," 
 he writes a fortnight later ; " perhaps poems will come 
 too." But this was hardly meant seriously, or if it was, 
 represented a momentary lapse from the tension up to 
 which he had worked himself, and which his new col- 
 leagues naturally took no pains to relieve. At the end 
 of Odtober Mr. Charles Rowley, who was then still per- 
 sonally unknown to him, though it only needed a first 
 meeting to make them friends, had written to ask him to 
 come to Manchester and give a Sunday ledture to the 
 Ancoats Brotherhood. Morris's reply was prompt and 
 straight: 
 
 " Kelmscott House, 
 
 "oa. 25th, 1883. 
 
 <c My dear Sir, 
 
 " I have only one subjedt to ledture on, the rela- 
 tion of Art to Labour : also I am an open and declared 
 Socialist, or to be more specific, Colledtivist, and whatever 
 I say would be coloured by my opinions on these matters: 
 if you think under these circumstances a ledlure from me 
 would come within the scope of your scheme, and be 
 acceptable as an expression of opinions for which of course 
 you would not be responsible, 1 should be very happy to 
 be one of those who ledture to you. 
 
 " I am, dear Sir, 
 
 " Yours faithfully, 
 
 "William Morris." 
 
 Mr. Rowley was not frightened by this reply : and the 
 lefture which Morris gave was the first of many that he 
 delivered in the New Islington Hall at Ancoats, and the 
 beginning of an intimate cordiality and affection between 
 the two men. 
 
 The manifesto of the Democratic Federation, issued in 
 June and signed by Morris together with the rest of the 
 
JET. 50] 
 
 WILLIAM MORRIS 
 
 "5 
 
 Executive Committee, had gone far in advance of any- 
 thing that was in his mind, or in the minds of most of his 
 colleagues, when he had joined it at the beginning of the 
 year. For the rapid development of dodtrine there were 
 several causes, any of them sufficient. In an association 
 which is itself formed by the detachment of the Extreme 
 Left (to use the convenient French term) of a great 
 party, the inevitable tendency is to become more and 
 more extremist. Waverers relapse on to the main body, 
 and the control of the movement passes more and more 
 into the hands of enthusiasts. Such a situation gives 
 a terrible power to logic. Friends and enemies alike 
 are quick to deteft and eager to pounce upon inconsist' 
 encies; and in human affairs, inconsistency can only be 
 avoided by falling back from compromise after com- 
 promise to the extreme limit of abstract theory. Nor 
 does the evil stop here. As an abstract logic becomes 
 more and more the dominant guiding force, the refined 
 distindlions to which logic lends itself become articles of 
 faith over which divisions are multiplied. The more a 
 party holding extreme do&rines defines the consequences 
 of its principles ; the more it purges itself of the am- 
 biguities of an unformulated creed and the inconsistencies 
 of moderate opinion: the more violent does the conflict 
 become among the remnant left, on points that have only 
 arisen in the course of argument. The path between 
 right-hand heats and extremes and left-hand defedtions is 
 always narrowing. In the seventeenth chapter of " The 
 Heart of Midlothian" the master-hand of Scott has 
 drawn an imperishable pifture of the disintegration that 
 ensues,, and the loss, first of moving power on the world 
 without, and then of vital energy within, that has over- 
 taken so many kingdoms of the Saints. The world takes 
 its own way, regardless of logic, impatient of theory, 
 merciless to failure : nor is it until the years have heaped 
 
n6 THE LIFE OF [1883 
 
 their dust over the asperities of the conflict that under- 
 standing comes with pity. Yet in the simple faith of such 
 a despised remnant, and not in the facile contempt of the 
 majority, may have lain that seed of spiritual ardour which 
 has kept the soul of man alive. 
 
 On the same day that Morris declared himself an open 
 Socialist with only one subject on which he could give 
 public utterance, he wrote to Mr. Horsfall in reply to a 
 letter of anxious and amazed questioning : 
 
 <c In few words what I have to say about the manifesto 
 is, that, though I may not like the taste of some of the 
 wording, I do agree with the substance of it (or I should 
 not have signed it). This does not however prevent me 
 from agreeing with you that the rich do not a6t as they 
 do in the matter from malice. Nevertheless their posi- 
 tion (as a class) forces them to 4 strive ' (unconsciously 
 most often I know) to keep the working men in ignor- 
 ance of their rights and their power. 
 
 f 1 Where I think I differ from you of the means where- 
 by revolution may be attained is this : if I do not mis- 
 represent your views, you think that individuals of good 
 will belonging to all classes can, if they be numerous and 
 strenuous enough, bring about the change : I on the con- 
 trary think that the basis of all change must be, as it has 
 always been, the antagonism of classes : I mean that 
 though here and there a few men of the upper and middle 
 classes, moved by their conscience and insight, may and 
 doubtless will throw in their lot with the working classes, 
 the upper and middle classes as a body will by the very 
 nature of their existence, and like a plant grows, resist 
 the abolition of classes : neither do I think that any 
 amelioration of the condition of the poor on the only 
 lines which the rich can go upon will advance us on the 
 road ; save that it will put more power into the hands of 
 the lower class and so strengthen both their discontent 
 
jet* 50] WILLIAM MORRIS 117 
 
 and their means of showing it : for I do not believe that 
 starvelings can bring about a revolution. I do not say- 
 that there is not a terrible side to this : but how can it 
 be otherwise ? Commercialism, competition, has sown 
 the wind recklessly, and must reap the whirlwind: it has 
 created the proletariat for its own interest, and its crea- 
 tion will and must destroy it: there is no other force 
 which can do so. For my part I have never under-rated 
 the power of the middle classes, whom, in spite of their 
 individual good nature and banality, I look upon as a 
 most terrible and implacable force : so terrible that I 
 think it not unlikely that their resistance to inevitable 
 change may, if the beginnings of change are too long 
 delayed, ruin all civilization for a time. Meantime I 
 must tell you that among the discontented, discontent un- 
 lighted by hope is in many places taking the form of a 
 passionate desire for mere anarchy, so that it becomes a 
 pressing duty for those who, not believing in the stability 
 of the present system, have any hopes for the future, to 
 lay before the world those hopes founded on constructive 
 revolution." 
 
 An opportunity soon occurred for him to announce his 
 attitude more dramatically to a larger audience. In 
 November he had been invited to Oxford to give an 
 address to the Russell Club, a society of Liberal under- 
 graduates with a tendency towards the newer develop- 
 ments of Radicalism. Social questions, under the stimu- 
 lating influence of Arnold Toynbee and his disciples, had 
 at that time risen to the first place among the intellectual 
 interests of younger Oxford. Toynbee's recent death 
 had only given a fresh impulse to the movement. The 
 so-called University Settlements were in the air. Social 
 reform was the current subjecft of discussion in College 
 debating societies and filled the pages of the Oxford 
 magazines. Mr. Henry George had le&ured at Oxford 
 
u8 THE LIFE OF [i88j 
 
 in support of his scheme of land nationalization, and had 
 been received with a studied incivility which aroused a 
 strong readlion in his favour. 
 
 The authorities, always willing to follow the lead of 
 any strong undergraduate feeling, and not averse from 
 allowing the new movement to spend its force in vague 
 discussion, threw no obstacles in the way of the meeting. 
 When Morris accepted the invitation of the Russell Club, 
 the hall of University College was lent to them for 
 the evening. The title announced for the address was 
 " Democracy and Art" ; two subjedls not obviously ex- 
 plosive when brought into contacft. The College hall 
 was crowded, and all went smoothly till at the end of his 
 address Morris boldly passed from theoretic ground, 
 announced that he spoke as the agent of a Socialist body, 
 and appealed to his audience to join it. The platform 
 sat aghast ; and the Master of University at once rose 
 to explain that the College when they lent their hall had 
 not known that Mr. Morris was the agent of any Socialist 
 propaganda, and that all they had meant was to give to an 
 eminent man the opportunity of expressing his opinions 
 on art under a democracy : c< a subjedt with which " (so 
 the report of the meeting gives Dr. Bright's words) 
 " he was unusually well acquainted, and a knowledge of 
 which, in the existing condition of social questions in 
 England, was a most desirable part of the education of 
 every young man." 
 
 For the misunderstanding, if misunderstanding there 
 were, Morris at all events was in no way to blame. He 
 had taken the utmost pains to explain his position clearly 
 before he came. To Faulkner, through whom as one of 
 the Fellows the request for the use of the College hall 
 had been made, he had written as follows on the 23rd of 
 Odlober. The original proposal had been that he and 
 Mr. Hyndman should both speak; but Mr. Hyndman's 
 
jet. 50] WILLIAM MORRIS 119 
 
 dodtrines were known to be revolutionary, and the 
 methods he advocated were believed to be violent. 
 
 a As to Hyndman lecturing in your hall I would ask 
 you to lay before the Master the fadl that I am quite as 
 much a Socialist as he is ; that I am an officer of the same 
 Association, and am distinctly going to ledlure as a delegate 
 from it: also that if the subjedt is to be stirred at all, it 
 is surely worth while to listen to a man who is capable of 
 giving a definite exposition of the whole doftrine. I am 
 rather anxious about this matter, as if Hyndman is shut 
 up I shall feel rather like a fool, and as if I were there on 
 false pretences. For the rest, Hvndman is an educated 
 man if Trin: Coll: Camb: is capable of educating (which 
 is doubtful), and though he is perhaps not as polite as the 
 Devil is usually said to be, is at least politer than I am : 
 neither has he horns and hoofs, as I am prepared to swear : 
 neither (as a Secretary of the S. P. A. B.) will I allow him 
 to blow up any old building in Oxford. Would it be any 
 good my writing to the Master stating these fads in con- 
 ventional language ; and also stating what seems to me 
 to be true, that people do seem just at this moment to 
 want to know something about Socialism ? though to tell 
 you the truth I misdoubt me that that may be but a 
 passing wind of fashion." 
 
 "We must leave the matter in the hands of the 
 Russell Club," he wrote to Faulkner again on the 25th; 
 " I have undertaken to give my ledture and will not back 
 out of it, but will deliver it where they think advisable. 
 Please to thank the Master on my behalf when you see 
 him ; I don't doubt he has done his best for us." 
 
 Notwithstanding these repeated explanations, the Col- 
 lege authorities appear to have been possessed by the 
 fixed idea that Morris, as a man of means and a man of 
 letters, could not be a Socialist in the same sense as his 
 colleagues ; and they persisted, with a sort of obstinate 
 
120 THE LIFE OF [1884 
 
 innocence, in believing that his address would be confined 
 to generalities which could do no harm. When they 
 found that he had really meant what he said, their feeling 
 was one which approached consternation. The meeting 
 had, at all events, a success of scandal, and henceforth 
 Morris was widely known as a declared Socialist. 
 
 In spite of all his labours as a peacemaker the year 
 ended gloomily for him. The party had got rid of its 
 moderate members. It had modified its name to that of 
 the Social Democratic Federation in order to make its 
 position as a Socialist body quite clear. It was about to 
 start a weekly newspaper for the purpose of spreading 
 its dodtrines among the working classes. But internally 
 it was already a distra&ed chaos. " I went to Merton 
 for a little time on Thursday/' says Morris's last letter 
 of the year, u and found all well there. Now I'm off to 
 see Fitzgerald (that 's our editor) about c Justice,' the 
 prospers of which I am not sanguine over. The fad is, 
 we really want a good steady business man over the 
 D. F. affairs : a man who could give up most of his time 
 and who wouldn't be excitable. For lack of it I fear 
 we shall fall to pieces. I am much worried by the whole 
 business just now : but in any case I shall try to save 
 something out of the fire and keep a few together." 
 
 Throughout 1884 this desperate work of mingled 
 proselytizing and patching up went on unceasingly. In 
 January " he can talk about little else, and will brook no 
 opposition." For a time there was almost a breach be- 
 tween him and several of his older friends. " I was rather 
 disconcerted," one of them has recorded, "when I found 
 that an honest objection to Bulgarian atrocities had been 
 held to be one and the same thing as sympathy with 
 Karl Marx, and that Morris took it for granted that I 
 should be ready for enrolment." Just at present Morris 
 had quite lost his capacity for good-humoured argument. 
 
JET 51] 
 
 WILLIAM MORRIS 
 
 121 
 
 " I have a dim recollection," says Mr. William De Mor- 
 gan, "of a discussion on Socialism which ended in a 
 scheme for the complete reconstruction of society exaCtly 
 as it is now, so as to meet the views of both revolu- 
 tionaries and Conservatives: however, this was in the 
 earlier days of Socialism — as he got more engrossed in the 
 subjeCt, this sort of chat became less and less possible." 
 
 The first number of the weekly paper of the Demo- 
 cratic Federation, "Justice: the Organ of the Social 
 Democracy ," appeared on the 9th of January. Besides 
 practically paying out of his own pocket for the weekly 
 deficit in its balance sheet, Morris contributed articles to 
 one-half of the numbers which appeared up to the end 
 of December. These contributions included three more 
 of the " Chants for Socialists," and one brief article on 
 that year's exhibition of the Royal Academy, expanded by 
 him in a longer paper which was published in the July 
 number of the secularist magazine " To-day." Like the 
 single piece of literary criticism he had printed twenty- 
 eight years earlier, this single piece of art criticism is more 
 interesting as a fragment of unstudied autobiography 
 than from its remarks on the special works singled out 
 for praise or blame. A few sentences from it are worth 
 quoting as summing up in brief and incisive words the 
 view he held, and had held all his life, of the function and 
 excellence of the painter's art. 
 
 s€ In considering such an exhibition it is necessary to 
 have a clear idea of what the aims of a painter should 
 be. Something like this, I think, will embrace them all: 
 1 st. The embodiment in art of some vision which has 
 forced itself on the artist's brain. 2nd. The creation of 
 some lovely combination of colour and form. 3rd. The 
 setting forth a faithful portraiture of some beautiful, 
 characteristic, or historical place, or of some living 
 person worthy to be so portrayed ; in either case so as 
 
122 THE LIFE OF [1884 
 
 to be easily recognizable by a careless observer, and yet 
 to have a reserve of more intimate facts for a careful 
 one. 4th. Mastery over material ; the production of a 
 finished and workmanlike piece, as perfect in all ways as 
 the kind of work admits of. 
 
 " Success in any of the three first of these aims, 
 together with the last, will give a picture existence as a 
 work of art. Most pictures that impress us seriously 
 have achieved success in more than one of the three 
 joined to the fourth, while great works of art have all the 
 four qualities united, yet in due subordination to the 
 master one of them, whichever it may be, which produces 
 the greatest impression on us ; this subordination is what 
 is meant by the word c style/ 
 
 " Skill of execution is the first thing we must seek 
 for, since without it a picture is incapable of expressing 
 anything, is a failure and not a picture. Well, there are 
 signs here and there on the walls of the Academy of skill 
 of a certain kind, but what does it amount to ? does it 
 give us any reasonable hope of establishing by our present 
 method of artistic life a workmanlike traditional skill, 
 continuous and progressive, so that while there may 
 be hope for a man of genius for pushing forward the 
 standard of excellence, no one, be he of genius or not, 
 need waste half the energies of his life in half- fruitless 
 individual experiments, the results of which he cannot 
 pass on to others ? What signs are there of collective 
 skill, the skill of the school, which nurses moderate 
 talent and sets genius free ? Scanty signs indeed: at best 
 a plausible appearance of workmanlike execution, a low 
 kind of skill which manages to get through the job, but 
 in so dull and joyless a way that one's eye almost refuses 
 to rest upon the canvas, or one's brain to take in any 
 idea it may strive to express. That is all, I fear, that can 
 claim to represent anything like traditional workmanlike 
 
jet. 51] WILLIAM MORRIS 123 
 
 skill. What other skill of execution is visible is chiefly, 
 almost entirely, an amateur-like cleverness, experimental, 
 uncertain, never successful in accomplishing a real work, 
 in expressing a fa6t or an imagination simply and straight- 
 forwardly, but often enough succeeding in thrusting 
 itself forward and attra&ing attention to itself as some- 
 thing dashing, clever, and — useless; the end, not the 
 means. Of this kind of skill there is a good deal ; and to 
 speak plainly it is on this quality, such as it is, that most 
 of the pictures must rest their claim to attention." 
 
 Ledturing, in and out of London, had now become his 
 most serious occupation. At Manchester he mournfully 
 notes that " the workmen seem on the whole to identify 
 themselves with the middle classes." Elsewhere "there 
 was a funny old ex-Chartist present, an old man of 
 seventy ; he said it made him feel twenty years younger." 
 At Edinburgh " a very good audience, and we fished two 
 additional members, not much you will say, but things 
 go slowly." Bradford, Leeds, Blackburn, Leicester, 
 Glasgow, were among the other provincial centres where 
 he gave these addresses. " I am in a hurry, as I always 
 am now," is one unusual, and coming from him, even 
 pathetic sentence in a letter. In March, writing to 
 Faulkner about the formation of a branch of the Federa- 
 tion at Oxford, he expresses in a few strong words the 
 uncompromising attitude he had taken up towards those 
 who sympathized and hesitated, or whose tenets did not 
 wholly coincide with his own. A number of liberal 
 Churchmen — most of them belonging to the advanced 
 High Church party in matters of ritual and dodlrine — 
 had once more taken up the Christian Socialism of 
 Maurice and Kingsley. " Meantime," he comments, 
 " the Christian Church has always declared against Social- 
 ism ; its mainstays must always be property and authority. 
 A worthy Irish Catholic member of the S. D. F. resigned 
 
i2 4 THE LIFE OF [1884 
 
 on those grounds when we declared for Socialism. Of 
 course as long as people are ignorant, compromise plus 
 sentiment always looks better to them than the real 
 article." 
 
 In April the weekly evening at Burne- Jones's house, 
 which had been the habit of so many years, finally 
 ceased, crowded out by the multiplicity of new engage- 
 ments. The one gleam of real pleasure that the year 
 brought him was a reconciliation, of which one of his 
 visits to Manchester was the immediate occasion, with 
 Madox Brown. " You are aware," he wrote of it to Mr. 
 Rowley, ff that there has been a cloud between him and 
 me, and I am more than rejoiced it should be cleared 
 off in such a pleasant way by my old friend himself, for 
 whom I have always had the greatest resped and affec- 
 tion." 
 
 A Hammersmith Branch of the Democratic Federa- 
 tion had been formed in June in order to organize work 
 among the labouring population of the district. The 
 manifesto which it issued was written by Morris. It is a 
 striking instance of the belief which he then undoubtedly 
 held, and from which it took long time and hard teaching 
 to remove him completely, that the re-organization of 
 society which he advocated was immediately practicable, 
 and that it had only to be effe&ed to make all the misery 
 of the world cease. " There is now a constant war," runs 
 this leaflet, cc between Capital, or the rich men who make 
 profits out of work without working themselves, and 
 Labour, or the poor men who produce everything and 
 have no more share in what they produce than is neces- 
 sary to keep them alive. While the rich enslave the 
 poor, they themselves are not happy, and are always 
 trying to ruin each other. Socialism will end this war 
 by abolishing classes : this change will get rid of bad 
 housing, under-feeding, over-work, and ignorance." 
 
jet. 51] WILLIAM MORRIS 125 
 
 Such were the sweeping promises then held out by the 
 Federation to a working class whom experience had 
 made deeply incredulous of all promises, or of any great 
 and sudden change in the existing order of the world. 
 
 At the great Franchise meeting in Hyde Park on 
 the 2 1 st of July Morris was one of the small knot of 
 Socialists who tried to convert the enthusiasm of the 
 occasion to their own uses, with little obvious success. 
 In the main they were unnoticed and swallowed up in 
 the vast crowd. They had provided themselves with a 
 little cart with a red flag, from which they distributed 
 their manifesto and tried to sell their newspaper. "We 
 found it easy work getting rid of the gratis literature," 
 he wrote next day, "but hard to sell anything/' The 
 attempts at speaking from the mound of the reservoir 
 in the Park were little more successful. A contemptuous 
 reference by one of the speakers to John Bright raised 
 a storm of hooting in the audience ; the crowd began to 
 push and sway, and the ring of friends round the banner 
 was broken up and dispersed. There was no adtual 
 violence ; a suggestion that the unpopular speaker should 
 be put in the Serpentine was not taken up : but the day 
 was over as far as any attempt to influence the crowd 
 was concerned. 
 
 By this time the internal jealousies and divergent aims 
 of the Federation were leading up to a crisis that could 
 not be much longer delayed. Its leaders profoundly 
 mistrusted one another, and personalities and accusations 
 of intrigue and duplicity were flying thick. The peace- 
 maker's task was plainly hopeless. 
 
 "The time which I have foreseen from the first," 
 Morris writes in August, ff seems to be upon us, and I 
 don't see how I can avoid taking my share in the in- 
 ternal conflict which seems likely to rend the D. F. into 
 two or more. More than two or three of us distrust 
 
126 THE LIFE OF [1884 
 
 Hyndman thoroughly : I have done my best to trust 
 him, but cannot any longer. Practically it comes to a 
 contest between him and me. If I don't come up to 
 the scratch I shall disappoint those who I believe have 
 their hearts in the cause and are quite disinterested, many 
 of them simple and worthy people. I don't think intrigue 
 or ambition are amongst my many faults ; but here I am 
 driven to thrusting myself forward and making a party 
 within a .party. However I say I foresaw it, and 'tis part 
 of the day's work, but I begin to wish the day were over." 
 
 Into whatever faults of intrigue or ambition Mr. 
 Hyndman may have been led by an undoubtedly jealous 
 and imperious temper, those were not wanting who 
 made it their business to foster distrust and exasperate 
 grievances. When, ten years later, the two men stood 
 once more side by side on the same platform, Morris 
 generously acquitted his old colleague of all blame for 
 the rupture. But the reconciliation could not reunite 
 a broken party, and the history of English Socialism in 
 the nineteenth century was then already a closed record. 
 
 The affair dragged on for several months more. The 
 mere idea of breaking up the party did not distress 
 Morris deeply : cc half-a-dozen people," he says, <c who 
 agree and are friends, that is, can trust each other, are 
 worth a hundred jealous squabblers." But he was 
 heartily annoyed and, to say the truth, frightened at the 
 prominence into which he found himself being pushed by 
 his faction. He had placed himself at their orders, in the 
 indistin<5t hope that he might elude responsibility by 
 simply doing loyally what he was told : now to his dis- 
 may he found himself called upon to become a leader, 
 and responsible not only for his own aftion, but for the 
 continued existence of his party. 
 
 What brought the quarrel to a point was a jealousy so 
 trivial that it can hardly now move anything beyond a 
 faint smile. A small knot of Socialists in Edinburgh 
 
iET. 51] WILLIAM MORRIS 1*7 
 
 (the same to which two further recruits were added by 
 Morris's visit and address that autumn) had been or- 
 ganized into a society by Mr. Scheu, whose business 
 had taken him there during the summer. To give it a 
 more imposing air, and also to conciliate the national 
 susceptibility, it was not made a branch of the English 
 Democratic Federation, but was started as a separate or- 
 ganization under the name of the Scottish Land and 
 Labour League. The fat was in the fire at once. Mr. 
 Hyndman called for the instant dissolution of the newly- 
 founded league in the name of the Federation One and 
 Indivisible. " Discord has arisen in this Council," ran 
 the reply of his opponents, " owing to the attempt to 
 substitute arbitrary rule therein for fraternal Co-opera- 
 tion, contrary to the principles of Socialism." The 
 scenes of the Convention of the Year Two were repeated 
 on a microscopic scale. Hyndman was denounced as a 
 tyrant; Scheu was denounced in turn as certainly a 
 foreigner, and probably a traitor in the pay of the police. 
 Accusations were flung back and forward of underhand 
 intrigue, of deliberately wrecking the work of colleagues, 
 of being bribed by capitalist gold. The extreme men on 
 both sides gave the impression that, if it had been pos- 
 sible, they would cheerfully have sent their opponents to 
 the guillotine. Things were finally fought out at a full 
 meeting of the Council of the Federation held in London 
 at Christmas. The details and the result may be given 
 in Morris's own words. 
 
 " My merry Christmas " — this is written on Christmas 
 Eve — c< is like to be enlivened by a scene or two at all 
 events. Last night came off to the full as damned as I 
 expeded, which seldom happens : and the worst of it is 
 that the debate is adjourned till Saturday, as we couldn't 
 sit any later than midnight yesterday. It was a piece of 
 degradation, only illumined by Scheu's really noble and 
 
128 THE LIFE OF [1884 
 
 skilful defence of his charadter against Hyndman : all 
 the rest was a mere exposition of backbiting, mixed 
 with some melancholy and to me touching examples of 
 faith. However, Saturday I will be out of it. Our lot 
 agreed beforehand, being I must say moved by me, that 
 it is not worth fighting for the name of the S. D. F. and 
 the sad remains of c Justice' at the expense of a month 
 or two of wrangling : so as Hyndman considers the S. 
 D. F. his property, let him take it and make what he 
 can of it, and try if he can really make up a bogie of it 
 to frighten the Government, which I really think is about 
 all his scheme ; and we will begin again quite clean- 
 handed to try the more humdrum method of quiet pro- 
 paganda, and start a new paper of our own. The worst 
 of the new body, as far as I am concerned, is that for the 
 present at least I have to be editor of the paper, which 
 I by no means bargained for, but it seems nobody else 
 will do. 
 
 " I went to Chesterfield and saw Carpenter on Mon- 
 day, and found him very sympathetic and sensible at the 
 same time. I listened with longing heart to his account 
 of his patch of ground, seven acres : he says that he and 
 his fellow can almost live on it: they grow their own 
 wheat, and send flowers and fruit to Chesterfield and 
 Sheffield markets: all that sounds very agreeable to me. 
 It seems to me that the real way to enjoy life is to accept 
 all its necessary ordinary details and turn them into 
 pleasures by taking interest in them : whereas modern 
 civilization huddles them out of the way, has them done 
 in a venal and slovenly manner till they become real 
 drudgery which people can't help trying to avoid. 
 Whiles I think, as in a vision, of a decent community as 
 a refuge from our mean squabbles and corrupt society ; 
 but I am too old now, even if it were not dastardly to 
 desert." 
 
/et. 51] WILLIAM MORRIS 
 
 129 
 
 On the 28th he resumes, writing from Merton Abbey: 
 cc Saturday evening did see the end. We began at 
 6 and ended at 10.30. 1 don't think it would inter- 
 est you to go through the affair in detail, and to say 
 the truth I am so sick of it that I don't think I could 
 write it all down. There was a good deal of speaking, 
 mostly on their side, for Hyndman had brought up sup- 
 porters, who spouted away without in the least under- 
 standing what the quarrel was about. It finished by H. 
 making a long and clever and lawyer-like speech : all of 
 which, as in the House of Commons, might just as well 
 have been left out, as either side had made up their 
 minds how to vote from the first. Accordingly we 
 voted, and the result was as expedted, ten to eight, 
 majority of two on our side. Whereon I got up and after 
 a word or two of defence of my honour, honesty, and all 
 that, which had been somewhat torn ragged in the de- 
 bate, I read our resignation from the paper prepared 
 thereto, and we solemnly walked out. This seemed to 
 produce what penny-a-liners call c a revulsion of feeling,' 
 and most of the other side came round me and assured 
 me that they had the best opinion of me and didn't 
 mean all those hard things : poor little Williams cried 
 heartily and took a most affectionate farewell of us. Of 
 course we did right to resign ; the alternative would have 
 been a general meeting, and after a month's squabble for 
 the amusement of the rest of the world that cared to 
 notice us, would have landed us first in deadlock and 
 ultimately where we are now, two separate bodies. This 
 morning I hired very humble quarters for the Socialist 
 League, and authorized the purchase of the due amount 
 of Windsor chairs and a kitchen table : so there I am 
 really once more like a young bear with all my troubles 
 before me. We meet to inaugurate the League to- 
 morrow evening. There now, I really don't think I have 
 11. K 
 
139 THE LIFE OF WILLIAM MORRIS [1884 
 
 strength to say anything more about the matter just now. 
 I find my room here and a view of the winter garden, 
 with the men spreading some pieces of chintz on the 
 bleaching ground, somewhat of a consolation. But I 
 promise myself to work as hard as I can in the new body, 
 which I think will be but a small one for some time to 
 come," 
 
CHAPTER XVI 
 
 THE SOCIALIST LEAGUE 
 I885-I886 
 
 " I cannot yet forgo the hope," Morris had written 
 in July, 1884, when the disruption of the Democratic 
 Federation was already looming ahead, " of our forming 
 a Socialist party which shall begin to aft in our own 
 time, instead of a mere theoretical association in a private 
 room with no hope but that of gradually permeating 
 cultivated people with our aspirations." After the first 
 spasm of disheartened disgust at the break-up of Decem- 
 ber was over, he was not disinclined to set to work again 
 to form such a party out of what he believed was a 
 thoroughly loyal remnant. To this task he now set 
 himself in fresh courage and with even higher hope. 
 The conflid had made him examine his own ground 
 more carefully : he was more satisfied than ever of the 
 truth of his principles, and of the reasonableness of his 
 position. But the prominence now forced upon him as 
 a leader at once exposed him to a redoubled storm of 
 misrepresentation and obloquy. Socialism had once been 
 regarded by ordinary middle-class opinion as a thing that 
 went on abroad. When there was no longer any doubt 
 that it had reached England, it was still looked on for a 
 time as a silly or perhaps even an interesting craze. But 
 now it had roused a genuine fear among a large body of 
 people. The attitude of Gallio was passing away, and 
 a strong feeling arising in its place which regarded the 
 
132 THE LIFE OF [1885 
 
 new Gospel, in the words applied by the Rome of Nero 
 to the not wholly dissimilar dodlrine of the early Chris- 
 tian Church, as a destructive superstition which drew 
 upon itself the natural hatred of the human race. 
 
 But this was not all. In the curious imbroglio into 
 which politics were then drifting, the name, and some at 
 least of the dodtrines, of Socialism had been seized by 
 various parties as weapons of attack and defence. The 
 famous speech in which Mr. Chamberlain laid down the 
 do&rine of " ransom " was delivered a few days after the 
 foundation of the Socialist League. On the part of 
 both the Radical and the Tory-Democratic wings of the 
 two great political parties there was a tendency to believe 
 that Socialism in some sense or another was a real force, 
 and a desire to attach that force and use it for all it was 
 worth. Overtures were made from both sides by per- 
 sons who might fairly be regarded as responsible poli- 
 ticians. Attacked by some and courted by others, the 
 Socialist party became an objedl of widespread and in- 
 creasing interest. It was enough to upset many Socialists 
 who were not old hands in politics, and make them be- 
 lieve that a great movement of public opinion was 
 about to take place towards Socialism. 
 
 On Morris personally the attack was a double one. It 
 consisted on the one hand in renewing, with additional 
 zest and less attention to ordinary manners, the familiar 
 sneers at the strange figure of a poet-upholsterer ; and 
 on the other, of denouncing him for inconsistency or 
 hypocrisy in being a Socialist who was also a capitalist 
 manufacturer. In his first public utterance after the for- 
 mation of the Socialist League, he had expressed his 
 hope and his aim in words of studied moderation. He 
 spoke of the social re-organization which he advocated as 
 something not only desirable in itself, but involving a 
 high conception of duty, and containing in it the ele- 
 
jet. 51] WILLIAM MORRIS 133 
 
 ments of solid permanence. " When the change comes, 
 it will embrace the whole of society, and there will be 
 no discontented class left to form the elements of a fresh 
 revolution. It is necessary that the movement should 
 not be ignorant, but intelligent. What I should like to 
 have now far more than anything else, would be a body 
 of able, high-minded, competent men who should aCt as 
 instructors. I should look to those men to preach what 
 Socialism really is — not a change for the sake of change, 
 but a change involving the very noblest ideal of human 
 life and duty : a life in which every human being should 
 find unrestricted scope for his best powers and facul- 
 ties." The Saturday Review, with characteristic suavity, 
 seized this occasion to point its finger at cc this speCtacle 
 of the intellectual disaster of the intelligence of a man 
 who could once write c The Earthly Paradise ' and can 
 now formulate these two propositions about the dis- 
 appearance of all discontented classes and the change 
 involving a life in which every human being finds un- 
 restricted scope for his best powers and faculties." This 
 last phrase, indeed, to judge by the number of times it 
 recurs in the article, was found humorous to an un- 
 common degree. That such a life 'should be conceived 
 of as possible, that any attempt should be made to 
 realize it, seemed quite preposterous to the critic and to 
 the large body of opinion which he represented. The 
 laws of nature were invoked to sustain the conclusion 
 that a state of things in which the larger number of the 
 human race were permanently poor, ignorant, and brutal 
 was certainly necessary and in all probability desirable. 
 
 The inconsistency of Morris's own position as a capi- 
 talist employer of labour was a matter on which he might 
 more reasonably be challenged by a criticism which was 
 not either purposely unfair or obviously unintelligent. 
 It had formed the ground of the earliest attacks made on 
 
134 THE LIFE OF [1885 
 
 him when the Oxford address of November, 1883, had 
 excited general attention to the case. To an attack 
 made by an anonymous correspondent in the Standard, 
 Morris had then replied in simple and dignified words, 
 which come near the truth of the matter, though, as 
 Morris himself felt, they require further definition. 
 
 " I think I may assume," he then wrote, " that your 
 correspondent had no wish to cast any personal imputa- 
 tion on my motives, but wished to call attention to the 
 position of those who, like myself, are well-to-do em- 
 ployers of labour (as I am) and hold Socialist views. 
 
 " I freely admit that this position is a false one, but it 
 seems to me that its falseness is first felt by an honest 
 man, not when he begins to express his opinions openly, 
 and to further openly the spread of Socialism, but when 
 his conscience is first pricked by a sense of the injustice 
 and stupidity of the present state of society. Your cor- 
 respondent implies that, to be consistent, we should at 
 once cast aside our position of capitalists, and take rank 
 with the proletariat ; but he must excuse my saying that 
 he knows very well that we are not able to do so ; that 
 the most we can do is to palliate, as far as we can, the 
 evils of the unjust system which we are forced to sus- 
 tain; that we are but minute links in the immense chain 
 of the terrible organization of competitive commerce, 
 and that only the complete unriveting of that chain 
 will really free us. It is this very sense of the helpless- 
 ness of our individual efforts which arms us against our 
 own class, which compels us to take an a<5tive part in an 
 agitation which, if it be successful, will deprive us of our 
 capitalist position." 
 
 Cf I have been living," he writes a few days afterwards 
 from Merton Abbey, " in a sort of storm of newspaper 
 brickbats, to some of which I had to reply : of course I 
 don't mind a bit, nor even think the attack unfair. My 
 
mt. 51] WILLIAM MORRIS 135 
 
 own men here are very sympathetic, which pleases me 
 hugely ; and I find we shall get on much better for my 
 having spoken my mind about things : seven of them 
 would insist on joining the Democratic Federation,though 
 I preached to them the necessity of really understanding 
 it all." 
 
 What is quite certain is that the reproach of inconsist- 
 ency was never made against Morris by any of his own 
 workmen. The attacks on this score which he had to 
 meet came in the main from educated people, who at- 
 tached their own meaning to the term Socialism, and were 
 confident in their condemnation of dodrines the purport 
 of which they had never taken pains to ascertain. The 
 fixed idea which most of them had was that Socialism 
 meant the redistribution of individual property in equal 
 shares. From this point, however, they pursued di- 
 vergent lines of argument. Some contented themselves 
 with remarking that if individual property were divided 
 equally to-day, inequality would have begun to reinstate 
 itself before to-morrow. Others argued that any em- 
 ployer who believed in the principles of Socialism could 
 carry them out in practice by sharing the profits of his 
 business equally among himself and each of his workmen. 
 But among the latter class of objeftors were some for 
 whose good opinion Morris had a resped: ; and it was im- 
 plicitly in answer to them that he drew up, in June, 1 884, 
 a memorandum going into the matter, not only on the 
 principle, but in detailed figures. 
 
 The business was then organized as follows. Morris 
 himself, George Wardle his chief manager, and four other 
 sub-managers or heads of departments, shared diredlly in 
 the profits of the business. Two others, the colour-mixer 
 and the foreman dyer, shared in them also, but indiredtly, 
 in the form of a bonus on the goods turned out. The 
 rest of the staff were paid fixed wages; the greater 
 
136 THE LIFE OF [1885 
 
 number (including all the most efficient workmen) by the 
 piece ; a smaller residuum, partly consisting of men who 
 were getting past work on the one hand, or on the other 
 as yet imperfectly trained, by the hour. Both piece- 
 workers and time-workers were paid on a scale somewhat 
 over the ordinary market price of their labour. " Two 
 or three people about the place," he adds, " are of no use 
 to the business, and are kept on on the live-and-let-live 
 principle, not a bad one I think as things go, in spite of 
 the Charity Organization Society. ,, 
 
 On an analysis of the figures, Morris found that if he 
 gave up his own share of the profits, which, of course, 
 included not merely the remuneration for his own labour 
 as manager, designer, and artificer, but interest on the 
 whole capitalized value of the business, by that time 
 representing some ;£ 15,000, and took in lieu of it a fore- 
 man's or a highly-skilled workman's wages of £4. a week 
 or £200 a year, there would be a sum divisible which 
 would represent £ 1 6 a year, or about six shillings a week, 
 for each of the workmen. cc That would, I admit," he 
 adds, cc be a very nice thing for them ; but it would not 
 alter the position of any one of them ; it would leave them 
 still members of the working class, with all the disad- 
 vantages of that position. Further, if I were to die or 
 be otherwise disabled, the business could not get any one 
 to do my work for £200 a year, and would in short at 
 once take back the extra £16 a year from the workman." 
 
 <c I have left out," he goes on with admirable sincerity, 
 fc a matter which complicates the position, my family. We 
 ought to be able to live on £4. a week, and if they were 
 quite well and capable I think they ought not to grumble 
 at living on the said £4, nor do I think they would." 
 There are perhaps few families of the richer middle class 
 to whom so splendid a compliment could be paid. 
 
 But what, the memorandum goes on, would be gained 
 
mt. 51] WILLIAM MORRIS 137 
 
 by taking such adtion ? A small knot of working people 
 would be somewhat better off amidst the great ocean of 
 economic slavery, but with what probable or necessary 
 result ? Like himself, the workmen were imprisoned in 
 an existing social system. i€ If the manufacturer were to 
 give up his gains to them, they would set to work to save, 
 and would become, or try to become, small capitalists, 
 and then large ones. In effect this is what mostly happens 
 in those few faftories where division of profits has been 
 tried. Now, much as I want to see workmen escape from 
 their slavish position, I don't at all want to see a few in- 
 dividuals more creep up out of their class into the middle 
 class; this will only make the poor poorer still. And 
 this effeft of multiplying the capitalist class (every mem- 
 ber of which is engaged in fierce private commercial war 
 with his fellows) is the utmost that could result from even 
 a large number of employers giving up their profits to 
 their workmen. The men would not know how to spend 
 their newly gained wealth. Even now there are at times 
 artisans who receive very high wages, but their exceptional 
 good luck has no influence over the general army of wage- 
 earners, and they themselves have in consequence only 
 two choices : the first, to rise out of their class as above ; 
 the second, to squander their high earnings and remain in 
 the long run at the ordinary low standard of life of their 
 brethren. The really desirable thing, that, being still 
 workmen, they should rise in culture and refinement, they 
 can only attain by their whole class rising. " 
 
 But this, as things go, he continues, is impossible; be- 
 cause the competition for subsistence keeps the standard 
 of life, taking labour all round, from rising seriously for 
 any long period. Trades Unions have in England raised 
 it, for a time, for skilled labour. But their effedt can in 
 the nature of things be only partial and temporary: for 
 on the one hand the movement, not being an international 
 
138 THE LIFE OF [1885 
 
 one, allows other nations to undersell us ; and on the 
 other, it does not include the unskilled labourer, whose 
 wage of subsistence finally determines the rate of the 
 wages of labour all round, and who is scarcely in a better 
 position than he was fifty years ago. 
 
 The choice, then, which lies before a capitalist, or before 
 the hanger-on of the capitalist class known by the name 
 of a professional man, whom reflection has turned into a 
 convinced Socialist, is this. Shall he ease his conscience 
 by dropping a certain portion of the surplus value which 
 reaches him, in order to bestow it in charity on a handful 
 of workers (for it is but charity after all, since their 
 claim is not on him personally, but on the class and system 
 of which he is a mere unit) ? or shall he, continuing his 
 life under existing conditions, do his best, by expenditure 
 of his money and his whole powers, to further a revolu- 
 tion of the basis of society ? If he can do both, let him 
 do so, and make his conscience surer. But if, as must 
 generally be the case, he must choose between suffering 
 some pangs of conscience and divesting himself of his 
 power to further a great principle, <f then, I think," Morris 
 concludes, " he is right to choose the first." 
 
 It is true that there is a third alternative, that of com- 
 plete individual renunciation, which, illogical as it may 
 be, has often, as with the earliest Christians, with the 
 mendicant friars of the great religious revival of the 
 thirteenth century, and since then in many splendid 
 isolated instances, affe&ed mankind more powerfully 
 through the imagination than they have ever been 
 affe&ed by arguments or enactments. If thou wilt be 
 perfe£f, go, sell what thou hast, and give to the poor, and 
 come, follow me. Such a course would have accorded with 
 Morris's own early dreams at Oxford of a monastic life, 
 lived by friends in common in the single pursuit of 
 poverty and art. But now it seemed to him to mean 
 
jet. 51] WILLIAM MORRIS 139 
 
 praftically, though not formally, abandoning the principles 
 for which Socialists contended, and giving up the struggle 
 in a spirit not far removed from cowardice. "If these 
 were ordinary times of peace, I might be contented amidst 
 my discontent to settle down into an ascetic, such a man 
 as I should respedt even now. But I don't see the peace 
 or feel it : on the contrary, fate or what not has forced 
 me to feel war, and lays hands on me as a recruit: there- 
 fore do I find it not only lawful to my conscience, but 
 even compulsory on it, to do what in times of peace would 
 not perhaps be lawful, and certainly would not be com- 
 pulsory. If I am wrong I am wrong, and there is an end 
 of it. Whatever hope or life there is in me is staked on 
 the success of the cause. Of course I don't mean to say 
 that I necessarily expedl to see much of it before I die, 
 and yet something I hope to see." 
 
 This, then, was the conclusion to which Morris came 
 as to what was right for him to do with his income as a 
 capitalist. To distribute it among his own workmen 
 would be to waste it; he could as little satisfy his con- 
 science by wasting as by hoarding: his duty was to spend 
 it ; to devote it, as he devoted all else that belonged to 
 him, to the furtherance of one great purpose. 
 
 How it could be so spent was sufficiently plain. The 
 newly-founded Socialist League was pradlically without 
 funds except so far as he supplied them. That it should 
 spread its dodlrines by means of a newspaper was taken 
 for granted from the first, and preparations for bringing 
 out the " Commonweal," the first number of which 
 appeared at the beginning of February, were begun the 
 first moment that the League was constituted. " I 
 intend," he wrote on the 4th of January, "to turn it into 
 a weekly if possible: but paying for c Justice' has some- 
 what crippled me, and I shall have to find money for the 
 other expenses of the League first." 
 
i 4 o THE LIFE OF [1885 
 
 The Manifesto of the Socialist League, which was 
 printed at full length in the first number of the 
 Commonweal, declares in uncompromising terms for a 
 complete revolution in the basis of society. Co-opera- 
 tion, Nationalization of Land, State-Socialism which left 
 the existing system of capital and wages still in operation, 
 are reviewed and dismissed as equally useless with merely 
 political movements such as constitutionalism or repub- 
 licanism. The League is stated to have been founded on 
 the 30th of December, 1884, and to have taken temporary 
 offices at 27, Farringdon Street. Morris is named as 
 having been appointed Treasurer of the League and 
 Editor of its journal, the control of the journal, however, 
 being in the hands of the Council. The twenty-three 
 persons whose signatures, as members of the Provisional 
 Council, are appended to the manifesto, were mainly 
 members of the little group of Socialists, English and 
 foreign, settled in London: but they included also an old 
 veteran of the Chartist movement, a few members from 
 the great manufacturing centres of Leeds and Glasgow, 
 and among them all, the one friend who had followed 
 Morris unfalteringly through all his life from the Oxford 
 days till now, as member first of the Brotherhood, then 
 of the Firm, and now finally of the League, Charles 
 Faulkner. 
 
 The beginnings of the venture were not discouraging. 
 "They have sold 5,000 and are in a second edition/' 
 Morris writes on the 10th of February: <c I have written 
 a poem for the next number, not bad I think." This 
 poem," The Message of the March Wind," which appeared 
 in the March number, has touches in it of the natural 
 magic which had filled his early poetry. It opened a 
 series of poems, forming a more or less continuous narra- 
 tive, which, under the title of " The Pilgrims of Hope," 
 appeared at irregular intervals in the Commonweal for 
 
m?. 51] WILLIAM MORRIS 
 
 141 
 
 upwards of a year, With all its faults, this series of poems 
 is perhaps the only contribution to the first year's issue 
 of the Commonweal which appeals to a wide circle or 
 has any permanent value as literature. It contains pass- 
 ages of extreme beauty : the two sections reprinted in 
 " Poems by the Way" under the names of " Mother and 
 Son" and "The Half of Life Gone" stand high among his 
 finest work. But the narrative of which they form parts 
 has much of the same weakness and unreality as his prose 
 novel of fifteen years earlier : and like it, dwindles away 
 and finally stops with the unfulfilled promise u To be 
 Concluded " in July, 1886. Of his prose contributions, 
 signed and unsigned, and ranging from carefully written 
 leading articles down to brief notes hastily set down to fill 
 up a column, there is little to say except that he no more 
 than other men escaped the vices of journalism when he 
 took to being a journalist. 
 
 Another visit to Oxford in February was more event- 
 ful than the one of fifteen months before, so far at least 
 as the behaviour of the meeting went. The Clarendon 
 Rooms had been refused for this meeting on account of 
 the fear of disturbance, and it was held in the Music 
 Room in Holywell. Opinion on both sides had stiffened ; 
 and Faulkner had, two or three weeks before, for a speech 
 he had made to a little Socialist meeting in Cowley, been 
 stigmatized in the sedate columns of the Oxford Magazine 
 as an alehouse anarchist. The social enthusiasm which 
 had been so strong in 1883 was beginning to cool down 
 among a fresh generation of undergraduates. But for 
 the healthy young Tory Morris had always a lurking 
 sympathy, and he writes the account of his experiences 
 in the highest spirits. 
 
 cf Wednesday I went to Oxford with the Avelings : 
 we went by the early train, and all turned out well, and 
 even amusing : we walked about Oxford a good deal, 
 
1 42 THE LIFE OF [1885 
 
 and even with all the horrors done to it, it looks very 
 well and beautiful on such a bright afternoon as we had. 
 There were terrible threats about what the lads were go- 
 ing to do, which I didn't suppose would come to much : 
 we met, some of us, in University Common Room to 
 settle the meeting, and it seems the enemy sent in a spy, 
 which however we survived. Charley had asked a great 
 many very young persons to dinner, and their ingenuous 
 visages made me feel rather old. So to the meeting we 
 went, in a room in Holywell, which I daresay you have 
 forgotten : it used to be the room of the Architectural 
 Society when I was a boy, and is now a music room : it 
 is just opposite where Janey used to live — Lord, how old 
 I am ! Well, we had a fine lot of supporters, town and 
 gown both, who put on red ribbons and acfted as stewards, 
 but the c enemy' got in in some numbers, and prepared 
 for some enjoyment. Charley was in the chair and led 
 off well, and they heard him with only an average amount 
 of howling : you must understand that there were but 
 some 20 or 30 of those enemies, and perhaps 100 
 declared friends, with some 250 indifferents who really 
 came to listen to us ; the hall was quite full. I had to get 
 up when Charley sat down ; I was rather nervous before 
 I began, as it was my first long speech without book, but 
 the noise and life braced me up, and after all I knew my 
 subjed, so I fired off my speech fairly well I think: if I 
 hadn't, our friends the enemy would have found it out 
 and chaffed me with all the mercilessness of boys. Of 
 course they howled and stamped at certain catchwords, and 
 our people cheered, so that it was very good fun. Aveling 
 came next : they had really listened to me, even the noisy 
 ones ; but it seems they had agreed that A. at any rate 
 should not be allowed to speak ; but he began very 
 cleverly and won their ingenuous hearts so that they 
 listened to him better than they did to me. Then came 
 
jet. 52] WILLIAM MORRIS 143 
 
 question-time, and that was more than they could bear ; 
 after two or three questions asked and answered, the joke 
 of the evening came off by one young gentleman letting 
 off a bottle of chemical which made a horrible stink, and 
 the respeftables began to leave and both the fighting 
 [bodies] to draw nearer to the platform. Then by 
 Aveling's advice Charley, who was by the way getting 
 a bit nervous, broke off the meeting, and we 1 got ' ; 
 which I suppose was the best thing to do, as more horse- 
 play might have made what was serious enough ridiculous. 
 After all the best joke was what we heard next day, viz., 
 that the disturbers were so angry with their ringleader 
 for not making a better job of it that they broke all his 
 windows that same night. I hope this piece of frankness 
 touches your hard heart as it did mine. We had some 
 serious talk at our inn after the meeting with the best 
 of the lads ; and then some of them took us into New 
 College cloisters to see their loveliness under the moon." 
 
 From Mr. Edward Carpenter's house at Millthorpe 
 he writes on the 28 th of April, on his way home from 
 giving Socialist addresses in Edinburgh and Glasgow: 
 
 " I have been getting on pretty well in Scotland, but 
 whether pock-pudding prejudice or not, I can't bring 
 myself to love that country, 'tis so raw-boned. But I 
 had my reward by the journey (the first time in daylight) 
 from Carlisle to Settle : 'tis true that the day was most 
 splendid, but at any rate 'tis the pick of all England for 
 beauty. I fared to feel as if I must live there, say some- 
 where near Kirkby Stephen, for a year or two before I 
 die : even the building there is not bad ; necessitous and 
 rude, but looking like shelter and quiet. There is a 
 good deal of this lovely country ; the railway goes right 
 up into the mountains among the sheepwalks : there was 
 a little snow lying in bights of the highest crags. I 
 needn't enlarge on an entry into the Yorkshire manfadur- 
 
i 44 THE LIFE OF [1885 
 
 ing country after this ; but I was so elated by the beauty 
 we had passed through that I did not feel it as much as 
 usual. I read a queer book called ' After London ' 
 coming down : I rather liked it : absurd hopes curled 
 round my heart as I read it, I rather wish I were thirty 
 years younger : I want to see the game played out." 
 
 "After London/' the unfinished masterpiece of Richard 
 Jefferies, was a book that Morris afterwards was never 
 weary of praising. It put into definite shape, with a 
 mingling of elusive romance and minute detail that was 
 entirely after his heart, much that he had himself ima- 
 gined ; and he thought that it represented very closely 
 what might really happen in a dispeopled England. 
 The effect of the book is perhaps visible in another letter 
 of the 13 th of May : 
 
 "I am in low spirits about the prospers of our € party/ 
 if I can dignify a little knot of men by such a word. 
 Scheu is, I fear, leaving London again, which is a great 
 disappointment to me, but he must get work where he 
 can. You see we are such a few, and hard as we work 
 we don't seem to pick up people to take our places when 
 we demit. All this you understand is only said about 
 the petty skirmish of outposts, the fight of a corporal's 
 guard, in which I am immediately concerned ; I have 
 more faith than a grain of mustard seed in the future 
 history of c civilization/ which I know now is doomed to 
 destruction, and probably before very long : what a joy it 
 is to think of ! and how often it consoles me to think of 
 barbarism once more flooding the world, and real feelings 
 and passions, however rudimentary, taking the place of 
 our wretched hypocrisies. With this thought in my mind 
 all the history of the past is lighted up and lives again 
 to me. I used really to despair once because I thought 
 what the idiots of our day call progress would go on 
 perfecting itself : happily I know now that all that will 
 
jet. 52] WILLIAM MORRIS 
 
 *4* 
 
 have a sudden check — sudden in appearance I mean — 
 c as it was in the days of Noe.' " 
 
 On the 27th of May he writes again, giving in a few 
 touches a vivid pi&ure of what the little meetings, over 
 which he was spending so much time and energy, were 
 really like. 
 
 " On Sunday I went a-preaching Stepney way. My 
 visit intensely depressed me, as these Eastward visits al- 
 ways do : the mere stretch of houses, the vast mass of 
 utter shabbiness and uneventfulness, sits upon one like 
 a nightmare : of course what slums there are one doesn't 
 see. You would perhaps have smiled at my congrega- 
 tion; some twenty people in a little room, as dirty as 
 convenient and stinking a good deal. It took the fire 
 out of my fine periods, I can tell you : it is a great draw- 
 back that I can't talk to them roughly and unaffectedly. 
 Also I would like to know what amount of real feeling 
 underlies their bombastic revolutionary talk when they 
 get to that. I don't seem to have got at them yet — 
 you see this great class gulf lies between us." 
 
 The numbers of the League grew only very slowly. 
 In July, when stock was taken of the progress made, 
 they only amounted to a little over two hundred all told, 
 over all the branches in both England and Scotland. But 
 they were working on hard in the hope of an ampler 
 harvest from some sudden movement of popular feeling. 
 In June they had taken new premises in Farringdon 
 Road, which included a printing office and a large ledlure 
 room. The output of leaflets and pamphlets, as well as 
 their monthly journal, was carried on to the utmost limit 
 of their means ; and it had been determined to turn the 
 Commonweal into a weekly paper as soon as sufficient 
 guarantee could be procured against the further loss of 
 money on it that was then certainly to be expected. 
 Morris himself, beyond his other work for the League, 
 
 II. L 
 
146 THE LIFE OF [1885 
 
 had set on foot a branch at Hammersmith, to whose use 
 he gave up the large room where he had begun his carpet- 
 weaving. Sunday evening addresses were regularly given 
 there by himself or others of his colleagues ; and as re- 
 gularly on Saturday afternoons and Sunday mornings he 
 spoke at outdoor meetings in different parts of London. 
 At these, as a rule, knots of working men and casual 
 passers-by listened with a languid interest. But in Septem- 
 ber the adtion taken by the heads of the Metropolitan 
 Police with regard to an open air meeting in Limehouse 
 raised the Socialistic movement into increased notoriety, 
 and gave it the greatest access of popular support that it 
 had yet found. 
 
 A space in that part of London, at the corner of Dod 
 Street and Burdett Road, had long been in common use 
 for public gatherings and open-air speaking on all kinds 
 of subjects, especially on Sundays, when there was prac- 
 tically no traffic. The Social Democratic Federation and 
 the Socialist League had both held meetings there re- 
 peatedly. Of late there had been some fridtion with the 
 police, and notice had been given that the meetings must 
 be stopped. The joy ful expectation of a disturbance drew 
 a crowd estimated at about a thousand people to the place 
 that Sunday. Against this crowd, which was quite deter- 
 mined not to be dispersed so long as there was the chance 
 of seeing any fun, the dozen or so of police who had been 
 drafted to the spot found themselves almost helpless. 
 Several ineffective attempts had been made to get at the 
 group of speakers who were on a drag in the middle of the 
 concourse, and the police, jeered at and hustled by an un- 
 sympathetic crowd, began to lose their tempers. Mean- 
 while one o'clock struck ; and the signal of the opening of 
 the public houses caused the greater part of the crowd to 
 disperse. Hot, weary, and angry, and not wishing to 
 think that all their unpleasant morning's work had ef- 
 
^t.52] WILLIAM MORRIS 
 
 H7 
 
 fedled nothing, the policemen charged among the remnant, 
 knocked down two banners, and marched eight men off 
 to the nearest police station, where they were charged 
 with obstructing a public thoroughfare and resisting the 
 police in the execution of their duty. 
 
 When the prisoners were brought up at the Thames 
 Police Court next morning, there was the usual amount 
 of confused and contradictory evidence given as to the 
 amount of obstruction that had really happened, and the 
 degree of violence used by or against the police. Finally, 
 after some rather irrelevant remarks about the nationality 
 of the prisoners and the contents of the bills announcing 
 the meeting, Mr. Saunders, the sitting magistrate, sen- 
 tenced one of them to two months' hard labour and im- 
 posed fines all round on the rest. What is known as a 
 scene in court followed; there were loud hisses and cries 
 of " Shame !" In these Morris, who was in court with 
 other members of the League, joined : there was some 
 hustling before order was restored, and he was arrested 
 and charged on the spot with disorderly condud: and 
 striking a policeman. To this charge he gave a direct 
 negative. No evidence was called on either side, but 
 the following curious dialogue ensued. 
 
 Mr. Saunders : What are you ? 
 
 Prisoner : I am an artist and a literary man, pretty well 
 known, I think, throughout Europe. 
 
 Mr. Saunders : I suppose you did not intend to do 
 this ? 
 
 Prisoner : I never struck him at all. 
 Mr. Saunders: Well, I will let you go. 
 Prisoner: But I have not done anything. 
 Mr. Saunders : Well, you can stay if you like. 
 Prisoner : I don't want to stay. 
 
 He was accordingly discharged, and left the court. It 
 was the one instance in which he was stung into asserting 
 
148 THE LIFE OF [1885 
 
 his own reputation in public, and the incautious words 
 were long remembered against him. But the whole pro- 
 ceedings were a substantial victory for him and his 
 party. The right of free speech is of all the privileges 
 of citizenship the one which the ordinary Englishman 
 guards most jealously : and interference with that right, 
 when it seems to encroach on customary limits, is fiercely 
 resented by the most orderly classes. More especially 
 is this so in London, where the police are under the 
 direCt control of the Imperial Executive, and where any 
 suspicion that they have been used by the party in power 
 to suppress hostile criticism is enough to shake the 
 strongest Government. The London Radicals rallied to 
 the defence of a threatened privilege, and letters of pro- 
 test poured into the newspapers from opponents as well 
 as friends of Socialism. Many people who took no in- 
 terest in politics at all were indignant: " already/' one 
 of them wrote to the Daily News, " police interfer- 
 ence has caused more obstruction and disturbance than 
 twelve months of Socialistic leCturing." A weak Con- 
 servative Government was then in office : a General Elec- 
 tion was imminent : and angry charges were made that 
 this attack on a Socialist meeting was an insidious attempt 
 to prepare the way for interference with open-air Parlia- 
 mentary meetings. The Socialist League rose with a 
 bound to something like popularity. The following 
 Sunday a procession of many thousands of people, organ- 
 ized by the East London United Radical Club, held a 
 meeting on the forbidden spot (the few policemen present, 
 under fresh instructions, not attempting to interfere), and 
 then dispersed in a quiet orderly way, good-tempered 
 with victory. "All goes well," Morris wrote: "we 
 Socialists have suddenly become popular, and your humble 
 servant could hardly have received more sympathy if he 
 had been racked by Mr. Saunders. All this has its absurd, 
 
jet. 52] WILLIAM MORRIS 149 
 
 and even humiliating side, but it is encouraging to see 
 that people are shocked at unfairness and persecution of 
 mere opinion, as I really think they are/' 
 
 Unfortunately for the prospe&s of the League, the 
 ground thus gained was soon lost by the old trouble of 
 ill-assorted colleagues and internal jealousies. Morris 
 himself, who had been working and travelling much be- 
 yond his strength, was laid up immediately afterwards 
 for a month or six weeks with the severest attack of gout 
 he had yet had, and in his absence the others fell to 
 quarrelling with one another. On the 31st of O&ober, 
 while still completely crippled by his illness, he wrote 
 to Mrs. Burne- Jones : 
 
 " Here I am still more or less on my back, though I 
 am getting better ; I have not had any very bad pain, but 
 have been so dead lame that till yesterday it has been a 
 month of wheeling me in on a sofa from my room to the 
 dining-room. I think I was much like this at Venice, 
 only not so lame. There, enough of symptoms. It has 
 been beautiful weather here till to-day, and I am glad of 
 that for your holidays' sake : also I have enjoyed it my- 
 self: it was quite a luxury to lie here in the morning and 
 let the sun creep over me and watch the clouds. I am 
 afraid that when I get about again I shall find myself 
 very lazy; I have picked up terrible habits of novel- 
 reading and doing nothing this spell. I don't think it 
 comes from my knocking about to meetings and the like, 
 but rather from incaution as to diet, which I really must 
 look after. You see, having joined a movement, I must 
 do what I can while I last, that is a matter of duty. Be- 
 sides, in spite of all the self-denying ordinances of us 
 semi-anarchists, I grieve to have to say that some sort of 
 leadership is required, and that in our section I unfor- 
 tunately supply that want ; it seems I was missed last 
 Monday, and stupid quarrels about nothing took place, 
 
ISO THE LIFE OF [1886 
 
 which it was thought I could have stopped. AH this 
 work I have pulled upon my own head, and though in 
 detail much of it is repulsive to the last degree, I still 
 hold that I did not do so without due consideration. 
 Anyhow, it seems to me that I can be of use, therefore 
 I am impelled to make myself useful. 
 
 c< It is true, as I think I have said before, that I have 
 no great confidence in the stability of our party : but in 
 the stability of the movement I have every confidence; 
 and this I have always said to myself, that on the morrow 
 of the League breaking up I and some half-do^en must 
 dire&ly begin a new organization ; and I believe we 
 should do so. 
 
 cf You see, my dear, I can't help it. The ideas which 
 have taken hold of me will not let me rest : nor can I 
 see anything else worth thinking of. How can it be 
 otherwise, when to me society, which to many seems an 
 orderly arrangement for allowing decent people to get 
 through their lives creditably and with some pleasure, 
 seems mere cannibalism ; nay worse, (for there might be 
 hope in that,) is grown so corrupt, so steeped in hypo- 
 crisy and lies, that one turns from one stratum of it to 
 another with hopeless loathing. One must turn to hope, 
 and only in one direction do I see it — on the road to 
 Revolution : everything else is gone now. And now at 
 last when the corruption of society seems complete, there 
 is arising a definite conception of the new order, with its 
 demands in some sort formulated. In the details of that 
 I do not myself feel any great confidence, but that they 
 have taken so much form is hopeful, because unless the 
 new is near to the birth, however rotten the old may be, 
 rebellion against it is mere hopeless grumbling and rail- 
 ing, such as you used to reproach me with. 
 
 " Meantime what a little ruffles me is this, that if I 
 do a little fail in my duty some of my friends will praise 
 
mt. 52] WILLIAM MORRIS 151 
 
 me for failing instead of blaming me. I have a pile of 
 worry about the party ahead of me when I am about 
 again, which must excuse me for dwelling on these things 
 so much. ,, 
 
 " They made it up last night," he writes a few days 
 later of the particular quarrel which was then agitating 
 the party. <c Even such things as this — the army setting 
 off to conquer all the world turning back to burn Jack's 
 pigstye, and tumbling drunk into the fire — even this 
 don't shake me : means one must use the best one can 
 get ; but one thing I won't do, wait for ever till perfedt 
 means are made for very imperfed: me to work with. 
 As to my not looking round, why it seems to me that 
 no hour of the day passes that the whole world does not 
 show itself to me." 
 
 Such was the courage with which Morris met apparent 
 failure. He was soon to be more seriously alarmed by 
 a sudden though elusive prospedt of premature success. 
 It was being borne in on him by bitter daily experience 
 how unripe the Socialist party was ; how discordant in 
 its aims, how unfixed in its principles, how incapable of 
 forming or guiding any large popular movement. On 
 the 8th of February, 1886, a meeting of the London 
 unemployed in Trafalgar Square had been followed by 
 a riot which caused an immense sensation, and to the 
 imaginations of many persons seemed the beginning of 
 a really revolutionary movement. When the meeting 
 was over, a mob made its way through several of the 
 main streets of the West End of London, hurling stones 
 at the windows of the club-houses, stopping carriages 
 and demanding money from the occupants, and break- 
 ing into and plundering several shops, less it would 
 seem from any distindt plan of robbery than as a rough 
 practical joke. Morris's own shop, or at the least its 
 windows, only escaped destruction by a few minutes ; the 
 
152 THE LIFE OF [1886 
 
 shutters were put up and the door locked just as the 
 crowd began to pour into Oxford Street out of North 
 Audley Street. But by that time they had become a 
 mere rabble, and were easily dispersed by the police. 
 " Contemptible as the riot was, as a riot," Morris wrote 
 of it, " it no doubt has had a great effed, both here and 
 on the Continent." Nothing of the sort had happened 
 in London for many years. Parliament had just met and 
 a change of Ministry was in progress. The rumours of 
 Mr. Gladstone's proposed Irish legislation had raised poli- 
 tics to a high tension, and there was all abroad a general 
 uneasiness and excitement which needed little to inflame 
 it. To the Socialists, at least to the more thoughtful 
 among them, excitement was mingled with a sort of 
 terror. They had been working for a revolution, hitherto 
 with little belief that anything could be effected for a 
 long time to come. Was the revolution, beyond their 
 expectation and almost beyond their hope, already at 
 the door? In the next number of the Commonweal, 
 Morris took the opportunity to issue a weighty state- 
 ment of policy. 
 
 The article opens in a tone that gives little promise 
 of applying either light or wisdom to the situation. It 
 was the time when the vices of that debased journalism 
 with which he had deliberately associated himself infefted 
 Morris most deeply. The description of the riot itself, 
 and the forecast of what might ensue from it, are not 
 free from qualities most deeply alien from his own na- 
 ture, tumid metaphor and tawdry declamation. So far 
 the writing is characteristic not of himself, but of his 
 party, or of any party of undisciplined and half-educated 
 men, whether reaftionaries or revolutionaries. But once 
 he has paid this sacrifice to the taste of his colleagues, 
 he speaks in his own voice with grave good-sense and 
 temperate foresight. 
 
kr. 52] WILLIAM MORRIS 153 
 
 <c I should like to say a few words with the utmost 
 seriousness to our comrades and supporters, on the policy 
 of the Socialist League. I have said that we have been 
 overtaken unprepared, by a revolutionary incident, but 
 that incident was pradically aimless. This kind of thing 
 is what many of us have dreaded from the first, and we 
 may be sure that it will happen again and again while the 
 industrial outlook is what it is ; but every time it happens 
 it will happen with ever-increasing tragedy. It is above 
 all things our business to guard against the possible con- 
 sequences of these surprises. At the risk of being mis- 
 understood by hot-heads, I say that our business is more 
 than ever Education. 
 
 " The Gospel of Discontent is in a fair way towards 
 forcing itself on the whole of the workers ; how can that 
 discontent be used so as to bring about the New Birth 
 of Society ? That is the question we must always have 
 before us. It is too much to hope that the whole working 
 class can be educated in the aims of Socialism in due 
 time, before other surprises take place. But we must 
 hope that a strong party can be so educated, educated in 
 economics, in organization, and in administration. To 
 such a body of men all the aspirations and vague opinion 
 of the oppressed multitudes would drift, and little by 
 little they would be educated by them, if the march of 
 events should give us time; or if not, even half-educated 
 they would follow them in any adlion which it was 
 necessary to take. 
 
 " Let me ask our comrades to pi<5ture to themselves 
 the consequences of an aimless revolt unexpectedly 
 successful for the time ; we will even suppose that it 
 carries with it a small number of men capable of govern- 
 ment and administration, though that is supposing a great 
 deal. What would be the result unless the people had 
 some definite aim, however limited ? 
 
154 THE LIFE OF [1886 
 
 <c The men thus floated to the surface would be power- 
 less, their attempts at legislation would be misunderstood, 
 disappointment and fresh discontent would follow, and 
 the counter-revolution would sweep them away at once. 
 But, indeed, it would not even come to that. History 
 teaches us that no revolts that are without aim are suc- 
 cessful even for a time ; even the failures (some of them 
 glorious indeed) had a guiding aim in them, which only 
 lacked completeness. 
 
 cf The educational process, therefore, the forming a 
 rallying point for definite aims, is necessary to our success ; 
 but I must guard against misunderstanding. We must 
 be no mere debating club, or philosophical society ; we 
 must take part in all really popular movements when we 
 can make our own views on them unmistakably clear; 
 that is a most important part of the education in organi- 
 zation. 
 
 " Education towards Revolution seems to me to ex- 
 press in three words what our policy should be ; towards 
 that New Birth of Society which we know must come, 
 and which, therefore, we must strive to help forward so 
 that it may come with as little confusion and suffering as 
 may be." 
 
 In issuing this manifesto Morris, while not taking any 
 step that brought him nearer the other wing of the 
 Socialist party, the Parliamentarians and opportunists 
 with whom he had broken a year before, also cut himself 
 definitely away from the more violent sedlion of his own 
 supporters, who were already beginning to class them- 
 selves as Anarchists. It became a question whether the 
 midway course he had chosen would attracft towards it 
 the best men of both extremes, or whether, on the other 
 hand, he and his following would find themselves a mere 
 thinning remnant between two divergent and increasing 
 camps. 
 
jet. 52] WILLIAM MORRIS 155 
 
 To Burne- Jones, who had written to him after the riot 
 of the 8 th of February asking him not to do anything 
 rash, he answered : 
 
 u Many thanks, my dear Ned, for your anxiety, but lay 
 it aside for the present. I shall not shove myself into 
 assemblies that are likely to turn into riots ; and for the 
 rest I don't think that the Government will be such doited 
 fools as to attack mere opinion. If they do, all liberal- 
 minded persons will be on our side and they will be ig- 
 nominiously beaten. At the worst as far as I am con- 
 cerned it cannot come to much more than a mere joke of 
 a Police-Court case ; and that not till the summer. I 
 think the present excitement (it is little more) will die 
 out; or rather be flattened out into a sort of dull discon- 
 tent favourable to our propaganda, but not likely to lead 
 people into mere aimless rioting. So I am not a bit 
 anxious about myself. My mind is quite made up as to 
 my position ; I daresay you would not agree with me as 
 to my views on that matter, but you would have to ad- 
 mit that I was right, judging the thing from my starting 
 point, namely that I am impelled to take adlion of some 
 sort. 
 
 " I will talk of this matter when we meet: meantime, 
 old chap, I send my best love to you for troubling about 
 me. 
 
 "I wish I were not so damned old. If I were but 
 twenty years younger ! But then you know there would 
 be the Female complication somewhere. Best as it is 
 after all." 
 
 " I have often thought," he says in another letter of 
 the same date, cc that we should be overtaken by the 
 course of events — overtaken unprepared I mean. It will 
 happen again and again : and some of us will cut sorry 
 figures in the confusion. I myself shall be glad when 
 this ferment sinks down again. Things industrial are 
 
156 THE LIFE OF [1886 
 
 bad — I wish they would better: their doing so would 
 not interfere with our propaganda, and would give us 
 some chance of getting at working men with intelligence 
 and some share of leisure. Yet if that will not come 
 about, and the dominating classes will push revolution 
 on us, let it be ! the upshot must be good in the end. 
 If you had only suffered as I have from the apathy of 
 the English lower classes (woe 's me how low ! ) you 
 would rejoice at their awakening, however ugly the forms 
 it took. As to my capacity for leadership in this tur- 
 moil, believe me, I feel as humble as could be wished : 
 yet after all it is my life, and the work of it, and I must 
 do my best." 
 
 The ferment sank down ; and though his forecast of 
 trouble with the police in summer was to be literally 
 verified, he had soon resumed the regular routine of his 
 work. "We had a very crowded meeting here on Sun- 
 day/' he writes to Mrs. Morris on the 3rd of April : 
 <c I am going to Croydon to-morrow. Murray is in town, 
 come back to Graham's sale : I saw him at Charing Cross 
 the other day. I go to Dublin on Thursday evening. 
 I see people are making a great fuss about Walker's 
 piftures : I don't much sympathize, but the one that 
 they have bought for the National Gallery is the best he 
 did. Ned's and Gabriel's are to be sold to-day. Millais's 
 Vale of Rest fetched a long price : but at any rate 'tis 
 worth a cartload of the wretched daubs he turns out 
 now." 
 
 c< I came back from the Irishry all safe last night," he 
 resumes on the 15th ; " but I am off to Leeds and Brad 
 ford on Saturday and shall not be back thence till Tuesday : 
 after that, peace as far as travelling is concerned till the 
 end of June. I had a good passage back, and did 5c 
 lines of Homer on the boat. Dublin on the whole I 
 rather like : there is a sort of cosy shabbiness about if 
 
jet. 53] WILLIAM MORRIS 157 
 
 which, joined to the clear air, is pleasant. The last meeting 
 on the Tuesday evening was peaceful and even enthusiastic. 
 The day I had spent up among the Wicklow mountains, 
 and found it very beautiful. On whatever other points 
 the Irishry are wild, they are quite cool, sensible, and 
 determined on the Home Rule question. I met some 
 very agreeable middle-classers there and had much talk — 
 far too much in fa ft ; I doubt if there is an iron pot in 
 Dublin with a leg on it by this time. 
 
 " I was very glad to get home and am very loth to leave 
 it I can tell you. However, the wine is drawn and must 
 be drunk." 
 
 The translation of the Odyssey to which this last letter 
 alludes had been just begun ; and its inception marks the 
 point at which the extreme tension of the last three years 
 began to relax. For as long a period to come he con- 
 tinued equally aftive and conscientious in the work of 
 spreading Socialist dodlrine, but creative work in art and 
 letters began now to resume its normal place in his mind. 
 The effed on his spirits and temper was soon obvious. 
 In May, when the fortunes of the first Home Rule Bill 
 were still swaying heavily in the balance, he could take 
 note of the wild words that were flying in the air with a 
 humorous side glance at the hardly wilder words of the 
 extremists among his own colleagues. " Rebellion is 
 getting quite fashionable now ; I shall have to join the 
 Quakers. I wonder if the Queen will order herself to 
 be arrested after having hoisted the flag of rebellion on 
 Buckingham Palace. I don't think, mind you, that there 
 is much else than brag about the Orangemen ; I suppose 
 it would end in a riot or two. But you really should 
 read the St. James's now and then; Hyndman at his 
 wildest is nothing to it." 
 
 Indeed he seems now and then to have found it neces- 
 sary to brace himself up against a moderation that was 
 
158 THE LIFE OF [1886 
 
 stealing over him almost against his will. cc I do not love 
 contention ; I even shrink from it with indifferent per- 
 sons. Indeed I know that all my faults lie on the other 
 side : love of ease, dreaminess, sloth, sloppy good-nature, 
 are what I chiefly accuse myself of. All these would not 
 have been hurt by my being a i moderate Socialist 1 ; nor 
 need I have forgone a good share of the satisfaction of 
 vainglory : for in such a party I could easily have been a 
 leader, nay, perhaps the leader, whereas amidst our rough 
 work I can scarcely be a leader at all and certainly do not 
 care to be. I say this because I feel that a very little self- 
 deception would have landed me among the moderates. 
 But self-deception it would have been." 
 
 That recovered sweetness of temper (which no one 
 but himself would ever have thought of describing as 
 sloppy good-nature, or good-nature of any kind but the 
 simplest and soundest) is apparent in a series of his 
 letters to his daughter during June. 
 
 June 2. " Such a knockabout day as I had on Monday ! 
 I saw in the Daily News that our men had been € run 
 in 9 at Stratford, and expedted what followed ; namely 
 that as soon as I got home I had to go off to West Ham 
 Police Court (which is the Lord knows where) and see 
 about cash for paying their fines : for we foolishly let too 
 many men be run in, so that though the fines were small, 
 it came to £5 1 7 s. in all. I am very busy ledhiring all 
 this week, and have plenty of regrets for the rest of 
 Kelmscott and your dear company ; but what will you ? 
 it is part of the day's work." 
 
 June 5. " Stories I have none to tell you : 'tis all meet- 
 ing and ledrture, ledlure and meeting, with a little writing 
 interspersed. It was Margaret's birthday on Thursday 
 when I went to the Grange I found. She is ever so old, 
 20 a&ually, just think, and she the baby of the lot! 
 Both the Hammersmith and the Merton gardens are look- 
 
mt. S3] WILLIAM MORRIS 159 
 
 ing very nice now, though even the latter is commonplace 
 compared with Kelmscott. A lady who came on Thurs- 
 day sent us yesterday a lot of peonies, single ones of various 
 kinds, very handsome : they are Chinese flowers and look 
 just like the flowers on their embroideries. 
 
 c< Your old Prooshian Blue (only 'tis indigo)." 
 
 June 15. "There is a good deal to tell you about 
 since I wrote last. Though I forget if I told you how I 
 went to speak on the disputed place at Stratford on 
 Saturday week. Well, I went there rather expe&ing the 
 police to 4 run me in.' In which case I should have been 
 fined the following Monday after a wearisome morning. 
 However the meeting was so orderly that they didn't 
 venture, perhaps all the more as two of the Radicals 
 spoke also ; the meeting also was somewhat short. Last 
 Saturday however they did c run in ' Mowbray and fined 
 him 20s. and costs yesterday, which seemed to me absurd; 
 I mean to say that they let us alone and got him. We 
 are not going to give it up however yet, but shall try to 
 get the Radicals to go into it heartily, as really an ordin- 
 ary meeting makes no obstruction at all. In any case I 
 shall not go there on Saturday, because on the Monday 
 after I am to go on the Scotch journey of which I told you, 
 and shall be away for a week. As to my coming to see 
 you, my darling, if I possibly can this week I will; though 
 it will have to be but a short visit. 
 
 "As to other events, we had our Conference on Sunday ; 
 all day long it lasted ; May and I getting home about 
 1 1.30 p.m. It was rather a weary job that Conference, 
 and as I was not a delegate, I had not got to speak ; 
 though that was after all rather a blessing, as the main 
 subject in dispute was the alteration of the Constitution 
 — not of the British Empire, but of the League. How- 
 ever all went well ; the alterers were defeated and bore 
 
160 THE LIFE OF [1886 
 
 their defeat with good temper ; but I am very glad that 
 there is a respite of a year before we can have another. 
 Yesterday (Monday) we had our outing and I rather en- 
 joyed it, though we did not distinguish ourselves by much 
 organization in it, wandering about rather aimlessly : also 
 the day was not brilliant, as in the afternoon there was a 
 sort of cloudy drizzle on the hills : yet we escaped a good 
 ducking. The place, Box Hill, is really beautiful, with 
 a famous box- wood at the top: you and I must go there 
 when you are back in London. We finished off in 
 Dorking, not however at the Markis of Granby, but the 
 Wheatsheaf, where we had tea, beer, singing and recita- 
 tion. I regret to state that in the town generally we 
 were taken for a detachment of the Salvation Army. In 
 fad Docking is a very quiet place, and I don't suppose 
 they have yet heard the word Socialist. I forgot to say 
 by the way, that though I didn't speak at Stratford on 
 Saturday I did so at Hyde Park near the Marble Arch. 
 I was quite nervous about it, I don't know why: be- 
 cause when I was speaking at Stratford I was not nervous 
 at all, though I expected the Police to attack us. At 
 Hyde Park we had a very quiet and rather good audience, 
 and sold four quires of Commonweal: and I spoke twice, 
 the second time not at all nervously. 
 
 " As to the Bill, my dear, we expedted it to be de- 
 feated, though not by so large a majority. The question 
 now is what the country will say about it. Again I ex- 
 pert Gladstone will be beaten, though this time he ought 
 not to be, as he is in the right. I thought his last mani- 
 festo (of yesterday) was good and straightforward: there 
 will be all sorts of trouble if the Home Rule matter is 
 not soon settled. I am rather enjoying myself to-day 
 after the last two days' excitement, in being quietly at 
 home on a nice fine fresh day, though I am obliged to 
 work very hard." 
 
jet. 53] WILLIAM MORRIS 161 
 
 June 23: Arbroath. cc I am here all safe and well: not 
 a bad sort of a town for Scotland : all stone built, and all 
 the older houses roofed with stone slates, right on the sea : 
 it is in fadl Fairport of 'The Antiquary/ The remains 
 of a very fine Abbey Church and buildings stand for St. 
 Ruth, the Musselcraig is identified, and so forth. I slept 
 a good deal on the road : woke as the train went out of 
 Stirling and showed a very raw-boned town but a lovely 
 country;: plain and mountains with Forth amidst it very 
 lovely. Perth also blue-boned, but a most beautiful situa- 
 tion, especially down the water of Tay. I have been 
 walking on the sea-shore not trying to remember Miss 
 Isabella Wardour; and now want my dinner." 
 
 Even the long-looked-for collision with the police over 
 the matter of open-air meetings, when it came, came in 
 the mildest and most good-humoured form. On Sunday 
 morning the 18th of July, in accordance with advertised 
 arrangement, Morris was addressing an outdoor meeting 
 in a street off the Edgware Road. An Inspector of police 
 appeared on the scene ; the crowd groaned, but made 
 way for him. He came up u mighty civil " and told 
 Morris to stop speaking : Morris refused ; his name and 
 address were taken, and the Inspector went away again. 
 Morris was summoned two days afterwards at the Mary- 
 lebone Police Court : the technical offence of obstructing 
 the highway was, of course, indisputable, and he was fined 
 a shilling and costs. This was his last encounter with 
 authority in the cause of freedom of speech. Public in- 
 terest in the matter had for the time died away. Since 
 their experience in Limehouse the year before, the police 
 had been afting more sensibly, and avoided purposeless 
 fridlion. The public were getting a little tired of the 
 meetings on waste grounds or at street corners, which 
 they vaguely classed with those of the Salvation Army as 
 probably well-meant but certainly foolish, and best treated 
 
 II. M 
 
l62 
 
 THE LIFE OF 
 
 [1886 
 
 with negledt. The Radical clubs, which had rallied to 
 the cry of free speech the year before, now hung back, 
 and very reasonably suggested that if there were to be any 
 common a&ion, the Socialists had better first make up 
 their own differences, which had for long been no secret. 
 Always eager for peace, Morris took on himself once 
 more the task of approaching the Social Democratic 
 Federation to try to patch up the quarrel. 
 
 The attempt at peacemaking proved quite futile. 
 Morris found the leader of the other faftion u stiff and 
 stately, playing the big man, and complaining of being 
 ill-treated by us, which was a Wolf and Lamb business/' 
 Indeed most of the grievances, on whichever side the 
 cause of offence first arose, seem now as they seemed to 
 Morris then, " preposterously petty." At Dod Street — 
 so the leaders of the Social Democratic Federation in- 
 sisted, and made this the front of the offence — there had 
 been a distind breach of faith as regards the order of 
 speeches on the 27th of September the year before. 
 Angry words had passed at the time about this, and the 
 Council of the Socialist League had passed a resolution 
 expressing its " pity for Mr. Hyndman's tools." The 
 insult was never forgotten. Since then each party had 
 roundly accused the other of trying to break up its local 
 branches by open abuse and underground insinuations. 
 " How can we make common cause," they asked, a with 
 people who are perpetually calling us all liars, rogues, 
 intriguers ? " For Morris personally indeed his opponents 
 expressed unaltered regard. To accuse him of intrigue 
 would have been plainly preposterous in the most heated 
 adversary : and little as they took a lesson by it, the 
 simple goodness of his nature impressed itself on even the 
 most jealous, the vainest, the most vindictive of the men 
 whom he longed to call his comrades, and for whose 
 faults and vices, so long as he believed they had the root 
 
jet. 53] WILLIAM MORRIS 163 
 
 of the matter somewhere in them, he had a patience that 
 was all but inexhaustible. 
 
 " Well, I think I have done with that lot," he writes 
 when this last negotiation had broken down. Cf Why 
 will people quarrel when they have a serious end in view ? 
 I went to Merton yesterday and worked very hard at my 
 patterns and found it amusing. I have finished the 
 8th book of Homer and got into the 9th, Lotus Eaters, 
 Cyclops, and so on. How jolly it would be to be in a 
 little cottage in the deep country going on with that, 
 and long walks interspersed — in the autumn country, 
 which after all I love as much as the spring." 
 
CHAPTER XVII 
 
 THE ODYSSEY: JOHN BALL". TRAFALGAR SQUARE 
 1886-I887 
 
 The return to literature, which began early in 1886 with 
 the translation of the Odyssey into English verse, was to 
 some degree both the cause and the effect of a gradual 
 change in Morris's attitude towards adlive Socialism. For 
 between three and four years he had forced himself, under 
 the impulse of a great hope and the continuous sense 
 of a primary duty, into a more contracted and perhaps a 
 less effective life than was consonant with his real nature. 
 His principles had changed little when he became a de- 
 clared Socialist : they changed even less now : but the 
 movement of things was lifting him slowly away from 
 the path that had coincided with or deflected his own, 
 and insensibly he began to swing back into his own 
 orbit. He held as strongly as ever that Education 
 towards Revolution was the end to be steadily pursued. 
 But the terms Education and Revolution both began 
 to shift and enlarge their meaning. As the strain of 
 an excessive concentration on a single task relaxed, the 
 joy of work returned in a fuller measure. " It is right 
 and necessary " — Such was the claim he had made con- 
 sistently from the first on behalf of human life — "that 
 all men should have work of itself pleasant to do; nay 
 more, work done without pleasure is, however one may 
 turn it, not real work at all, but useless and degrading 
 toil." The educational^ no less than the creative, work 
 
^t. 53] THE LIFE OF WILLIAM MORRIS 165 
 
 which he did in the latter years of life resumed this 
 pleasurable quality, which for a time, under the compul- 
 sion of what seemed an overpowering duty, had been 
 almost beaten out of it. In the strenuous self-devotion 
 to the labours exa6ted of him by his party — sometimes 
 distasteful to him in the highest degree, sometimes of a 
 kind for which he had little native aptitude — there had 
 been an element of what he himself felt to be unnatural. 
 His energy had become forced and feverish. In his own 
 beautiful words, it was the u power of the strong man 
 yearning to accomplish something before his death, not 
 the simple hope of the child who has long years of life and 
 growth before him." That simple hope is a thing which, 
 once broken, can never be wholly restored. But in his 
 work for the cause henceforth there was, in spite of all 
 discouragements, the hope and the joy that come of work 
 which looks to no immediate results, and is checked by 
 no apparent failure, but sows the seed and leaves it to 
 quicken : as if a man should cast seed into the ground, 
 and should sleep and rise night and day, and the seed 
 should spring and grow up, he knoweth not how. 
 
 The translation of the Odyssey had been begun in 
 February, but made little progress till summer, when he 
 took to it with keen interest and advanced with it rapidly. 
 "The Odyssey is to my mind much the most interesting of 
 the two," he had written to Ellis when he first took up the 
 translation, cc but I may do the Iliad afterwards. It is hard 
 work, much more so than the Virgil, owing to the great 
 simplicity of the original, which never has a redundant 
 word in it, or a word without a meaning : however it is 
 very pleasant work." As it went on, its soothing effecft 
 over his nerves became more and more marked. At the 
 beginning of September he alludes to its progress in a 
 letter promising a visit to W. Bell Scott in his northern 
 home at Penkill : 
 
166 THE LIFE OF [1886 
 
 " I am of course much more from pillar to post since 
 I have taken to the pernicious pradice of what may be 
 called professional agitation, professional though unpaid, 
 except by general loss of reputation, which however is of 
 no importance, and by no means balances on the wrong 
 side the pleasure on the right side of being engaged in 
 an important movement. Things seem to us more and 
 more tending to a great change, though no doubt it will 
 take time, and also there is a great expenditure of 
 patience necessary to meet all the petty worries that en- 
 cumber the progress of even great movements. I am also 
 at work, as perhaps you have heard, at translating the 
 Odyssey : this is very amusing : and a great rest from the 
 other work : I am in the middle of the 9th book now." 
 
 On the 7th of September he writes to Kelmscott : 
 
 cc Dearest Jenny, 
 
 Cc I am just writing a line to say that I am well 
 and busy, though somewhat sulky at being dragged 
 away from Kelmscott. The garden here is going the 
 way of all London autumn gardens ; but there is still a 
 sort of pale prettiness about it, and there are a good 
 many flowers in it, chiefly Japanese anemones and 
 c Chaynee oysters.' The gardener is busy to-day tidy- 
 ing up. Yesterday M. Guerrault called wanting work; 
 Mr. York Powell (who is working with Gudbrandr 
 Vigfusson at Oxford) was with him : the conversation I 
 regret to say was chiefly between Powell and me, as 
 Guerrault talks little English and I — well. Powell is a 
 very nice fellow, a good deal of a Socialist and very 
 genial : he was born and bred in Walthamstow, though 
 a Welsh one of blood : he used as a boy to come to 
 Leyton House, he told me. I go to Merton Abbey to- 
 day, and in the evening to a Fabian meeting, where it 
 seems our people expedt me to speak against the party of 
 
mt. S3] WILLIAM MORRIS 
 
 167 
 
 compromise. Young Tom Wardle was summoned for 
 speaking at the Harrow Road Station, some weeks ago, 
 and appeared at the police-court yesterday: he was com- 
 mitted for trial : he says he will not pay a fine — item his 
 father says he won't. The Temperance people sent a 
 deputation to us on the beautiful Monday that we others 
 went to the White Horse on ; they are quite prepared 
 to work with us, and in fad: we have made an alliance 
 offensive and defensive with them: I think we shall beat 
 the police in the long run after all. Even at the place 
 where T. Wardle was summoned they have not inter- 
 fered with us for three weeks. 
 
 cc Dear me ! my Jenny, what a nice four days I did 
 have down there with you ; I doubt if I ever enjoyed 
 myself so much in my life : it was delightful and dear. 
 
 " I have a long letter from Mr. Birchall this morning 
 about semi-Socialism : he is really a very sensible man : 
 and Mr. Turner says he has very good knowledge of 
 archaeology. Well, my dear, I must now go to Merton. 
 Best love, dear : also to all the party. 
 
 " Your loving father, 
 
 "W. M." 
 
 Later in the month he went to Edinburgh to give an 
 address. On the journey, " I amused myself partly with 
 Homer (no lines) and partly with reading a new book 
 which is very interesting, Russian Epic Songs to wit. 
 The smoke hung low on Edinburgh, so that the moun- 
 tains looked like strong outlines against the sky, and the 
 ugly detail of the houses was a good deal hidden : so 
 that there was something very fine about the whole view 
 from the Castle Hill, to which I wandered before getting 
 into the church where our window is. Our window is 
 fine, and looks a queer contrast with its glittering jewel- 
 like colour to the daubs about it. There is no station 
 
168 THE LIFE OF [1887 
 
 hotel at Edinburgh, so I had to make a shot at one, and 
 it was a bad one too ; dull and not over clean. It was 
 quite respectable however, although its dulness was re- 
 lieved by a sudden fight between the head waiter and a 
 quarrelsome gentleman more or less in liquor. The 
 waiter got the best of it and quite deserved to do so, as 
 far as I could see. It was a curious piece of drama to 
 note the attempts of the quarrelsome gentleman to get 
 away with some kind of dignity, while his old antagon- 
 ist, become the polite waiter again, brushed past him 
 taking other people's orders." 
 
 Already literature both in prose and verse was filling 
 up his mind. At the end of October he was full of new 
 proje6ts : u it really would be rather convenient to me to 
 have a little gout in order to do some literary work." 
 One of these projedts, never carried out, was to rewrite 
 and complete the fragments of the poem which had 
 appeared in the Commonweal under the title of c< The 
 Pilgrims of Hope." The first half of the Odyssey was 
 nearly completed. And he had begun to write the flower 
 of his prose romances, the work into which he put his 
 most exquisite descriptions and his deepest thoughts on 
 human life, "The Dream of John Ball." It also was first 
 published in the Commonweal, beginning in the number 
 for the 13th of November, 1886, and concluding in that 
 for the 22nd of January, 1887. 
 
 Even in his dired work for the party — for he still took 
 his full share of duty as a Socialist speaker and on the 
 executive of the League — the reviving literary instind 
 was beginning to show itself unmistakably. No sooner 
 was " John Ball " completed than he began to write an 
 elaborate diary of his work and of the movement of 
 things generally in the world about him, with the view 
 of compiling an exa6l contemporary chronicle. Like 
 the Iceland diary of 1 871, it was written with some 
 
jet. 53] WILLIAM MORRIS 
 
 169 
 
 more or less defined view of publication ; u I am writing 
 a diary," he says in a letter to his daughter," which may 
 one day be published as a kind of view of the Socialist 
 movement seen from the inside, Jonah's view of the 
 whale, you know, my dear." But it was carried on for 
 only three months : and three months' experience may 
 have sufficed to convince him that this sort of literature — 
 if literature it was stri&ly to be called — was not on his own 
 strongest side and was hampering him in more important 
 work. The fragment has a double interest, both from 
 passages which seem to show that he still treasured 
 the hope of some sudden and surprising revolution in 
 civilized life, and from other passages in which he criti- 
 cises his party from the outside with a curiously dispas- 
 sionate clearness. In both alike, and indeed all through, 
 it has the unique transparency of a record of his adlual 
 thoughts at each moment, without any attempt at con- 
 sistency, or at altering his forecasts in the light of adlual 
 events. The fragment has no heading. It opens with 
 the words, " I begin what may be called my diary from 
 this point, January 25th, 1887"; and then goes on 
 without any further preface, " I went down to ledlure at 
 Merton Abbey last Sunday." One of its most notice- 
 able features is the keen and even excited interest he 
 takes in the course of current politics, both domestic and 
 international. This is not indeed surprising in itself, for 
 the time was one of uncertainty and excitement, but it 
 contrasts curiously with the tone of lordly indifference 
 adopted in the official journal of the Socialist League to- 
 wards things that lay outside their own movement. The 
 extracts which follow show what immense labour he con- 
 tinued to spend in the service of the League, and how 
 clearly nevertheless he saw the weakness of their 
 machinery and the futility of the greater part of their 
 efforts, and of his own. 
 
170 THE LIFE OF [1887 
 
 " I went down to le&ure at Merton Abbey last Sunday : 
 the little room was pretty full of men, mostly of the 
 labourer class : anything attacking the upper classes 
 direftly moved their enthusiasm ; of their discontent 
 there could be no doubt, or the sincerity of their class 
 hatred : they have been very badly off there this winter, 
 and there is little to wonder at in their discontent; but 
 with a few exceptions they have not yet learned what 
 Socialism means; they and Frank Kitz were much excited 
 about the Norwich affair, and he made a very hot speech : 
 he was much exercised about the police being all about 
 the place, detedtives inside and so on : I fancy their game 
 is to try to catch the club serving non-members with beer 
 or in someway breaking the iaw. But there is no doubt 
 that there is a good deal of stir amongst the labourers 
 about there ; the place is wretchedly poor. 
 
 " I slept at Merton, and in the morning got the Norwich 
 paper with a full account of the trial of Mowbray and 
 Henderson; the Judge's summing up of the case was 
 amusing and instructive, as showing a sort of survival of 
 the old sort of bullying of the Castlereagh times mixed 
 with a grotesque attempt at modernization on philan- 
 thropical lines : it put me in a great rage. 
 
 " The Daily News printed my letter ; it had also a 
 brief paragraph asserting that Germany would presently 
 ask France the meaning of her war preparations, and an 
 alarmist article therewith. I did not know but what the 
 other papers had the same news, and was much excited 
 at the idea : because whatever one may say, one cannot 
 help hoping that such a huge turmoil as a European 
 war could not fail to turn to some advantage for us. 
 Coming to town however I found that the evening papers 
 poh-poh it as a mere hurrying up of the belated Daily 
 News. Yet there may be something in it. 
 
 " At the Council of the Socialist League in the even- 
 
jet. S3] WILLIAM MORRIS 171 
 
 ing : the Avelings there mighty civil, but took no part 
 in the proceedings. A dullish meeting, both sides rather 
 shy of the Norwich matter, which but for the heaviness 
 of the sentences would be but a pitiful affair : a com- 
 mittee was appointed to see after Mowbray's wife and 
 children while he is in : a letter came from Norwich with 
 the news of their having held a great meeting of 6,000 
 in the market-place on Sunday, at which they passed re- 
 solutions condemning the sentence, and in favour of the 
 Social Revolution : though I fear few indeed out of the 
 6,000 knew what that meant. They were getting up a 
 petition to the Home Secretary. 
 
 " Our attempt to get up an Irish meeting of the 
 Radicals led by the Socialists will fail: we are not big 
 enough for the job : the Radical clubs are civil to us but 
 afraid of us, and not yet prepared to break with the 
 Liberals. . . . 
 
 " Jan. 26th. Went to South Kensington Museum yes- 
 terday with Jenny to look at the Troy tapestry again 
 since they have bought it for £1,250: I chuckled to 
 think that properly speaking it was bought for me, since 
 scarcely anybody will care a damn for it. A. Cole showed 
 us a lot of scraps of woven stuff from the tombs of 
 Upper Egypt ; very curious as showing in an unusual 
 material the transition to the pure Byzantine style from 
 the Classical : some pieces being nothing but debased 
 Classical style, others purely Byzantine, yet I think not 
 much different in date : the contrast between the bald 
 ugliness of the Classical pieces and the great beauty of 
 the Byzantine was a pleasing thing to me, who loathe so 
 all Classical art and literature. I spoke in the evening 
 at the Hammersmith Radical Club at a meeting to con- 
 demn the Glenbeigh evictions, the room crowded, and of 
 course our Socialist friends there ; my speech was well 
 received, but I thought the applause rather hollow, as the 
 
172 THE LIFE OF [1887 
 
 really Radical part of the audience had clearly no ideas 
 beyond the ordinary party shibboleths, and were quite 
 untouched by Socialism : they seemed to me a very 
 discouraging set of men ; but perhaps can be got at 
 somehow — the frightful ignorance and want of impres- 
 sibility of the average English workman floors me at 
 times. 
 
 cc 27th. I went to Merton yesterday on a lovely day. 
 Wardle told me the whole story of what they are doing 
 and are going to do at St. Mark's at Venice. I was in- 
 coherent with rage : they will soon finish up the whole 
 thing there — and indeed everywhere else. . . . 
 
 " Parliament is to meet to-day : that is not of much 
 importance to f we-uns': it is a matter of course that if 
 the Government venture to bring forward a gagging- 
 bill they will not venture to make it anything but an 
 Irish one. For my part I should rather like the Liberals 
 to get in again : for if they do, they must either push on 
 the revolution by furthering Irish matters, which will be 
 a dire6t gain to us ; or they must sneak out of the Irish 
 question, which would be an indirect gain to us, but a 
 far greater one, as it would turn all that is democratic 
 sick of them. It seems that they by no means want to 
 get in, and I don't wonder, considering that dilemma. 
 
 <c News this morning that Goschen has lost Liver- 
 pool. ... It is curious to see how equally the parties 
 are balanced in the electorate, by the way: and this again 
 is hopeful for us, because it will force the Liberals to be 
 less and less democratic, and so consolidate the Party of 
 Rea&ion. 
 
 cc Feb. 3rd. Went down to Rottingdcan on Friday 
 28th and spent three or four days there : was very glad 
 to leave the Newspapers alone while there : did Homer 
 and an article for Commonweal. ... I was very loth 
 to come back ; though as for holidays 'tis a mistake to 
 
mt. 53] WILLIAM MORRIS 173 
 
 call them rests : one is excited and eager always ; at any 
 rate during a short holiday, and I don't know what a 
 long one means. The ordinary drifting about of a c busy' 
 man is much less exciting than these sort of holidays. . . . 
 
 " Feb. 7th (Monday). On Friday I went up to the 
 Chiswick club, where Mordhurst (one of our Hammer- 
 smith Branch) was to have opened a debate on the 
 Class-war, but as he didn't turn up, I was called on to 
 take his place : the room was not large ; about twenty 
 people there at first, swelling to forty perhaps before the 
 end : the kind of men composing the audience is a matter 
 worth noting, since the chief purpose of this diary is to 
 record my impressions on the Socialist movement. I 
 should say then that the speakers were all either of the 
 better-to-do workmen or small tradesmen class, except 
 Gordon Hogg, who is a doftor. . . . My Socialism was 
 gravely listened to by the audience, but taken with no 
 enthusiasm, and in fadt however simply one puts the case 
 for Socialism one always rather puzzles an audience : the 
 speakers, except Hogg and a young timid member of 
 our branch, were muddled to the last degree; but clearly 
 the most intelligent men did not speak : the debate 
 was adjourned till next Friday, but I was allowed a 
 short reply in which I warmed them up somehow. This 
 description of an audience may be taken for almost any 
 other at a Radical club, mutatis mutandis. The sum 
 of it all is that the men at present listen respectfully to 
 Socialism, but are perfectly supine and not m the least 
 inclined to move except along the lines of Radicalism 
 and Trades' Unionism. . . . 
 
 " Yesterday (Sunday) we began our open-air meetings 
 at Beadon Road, near the Broadway there. I spoke alone 
 for about an hour, and a very fair audience (for the place, 
 which is out of the way) gathered curiously quickly ; a 
 comrade counted a hundred at most. This audience 
 
174 THE LIFE OF [1887 
 
 characteristic of small open-air meetings, also quite mixed, 
 from labourers on their Sunday lounge to < respedable 9 
 people coming from church : the latter inclined to grin : 
 the working men listening attentively trying to under- 
 stand, but mostly failing to do so : a fair cheer when I 
 ended, of course led by the three or four Branch members 
 present. . . . 
 
 " Feb. 1 2th. I have been on League business every 
 night this week till to-night " (Saturday). " Monday 
 the Council meeting peaceable enough, and dull. . . . 
 Tuesday I took the chair at the meeting to protest against 
 the (possible) coming war at Cleveland Hall, Cleveland 
 St., a wretched place once flash and now sordid, in a 
 miserable street. It is the head-quarters of what I should 
 call the orthodox Anarchists : Vidtor Dave the leading 
 spirit there. Of course there were many c foreigners ' 
 there, and also a good sprinkling of our people and I 
 suppose of the Federation also. It was rather hard work 
 getting through all the speeches in the unknown tongues 
 of French and German, and the natives showed their 
 almost superstitious reverence for internationalism by 
 sitting through it all patiently: the foreign speakers were 
 mostly of the 1 orthodox Anarchists ' ; but a Colle6tivist 
 also spoke, and one at least of the Autonomy sedlion, who 
 have some quarrel which I can't understand with the 
 Cleveland Hall people : a Federation man spoke though 
 he was not a delegate ; also Macdonald of the Socialist 
 Union : the Fabians declined to send on the grounds of 
 the war-scare being premature : but probably in reality 
 because they did not want to be mixed up too much 
 with the Anarchists : the Krapotkine- Wilson people also 
 refused on the grounds that bourgeois peace is a war, 
 which no doubt was a genuine reason on their part and 
 is true enough. . . . On Wednesday I went to ledture 
 at a schoolroom in Peckham High Street. . . . Thursday 
 
jet. 53] WILLIAM MORRIS 175 
 
 I went to the Ways and Means Committee at the League: 
 found them cheerful there on the prospers of Common- 
 weal. I didn't quite feel as cheerful as the others, but 
 hope it may go on. Friday I went in the evening to 
 finish the debate begun last week : the room full. Spar- 
 ling made a good speech ; I didn't. 
 
 " Feb. 1 6th. Sunday I spoke on a very cold windy 
 (N.E.) morning at the Walham Green Station: the 
 people listened well though the audience was not large, 
 about 60 at the most. ... I ledtured on f Mediaeval 
 England ' to a good audience here in the evening : lecture 
 rather c young.' 
 
 <c Monday, Council meeting very quiet and short. . . . 
 In the afternoon Bax called with Champion, who thinks 
 of starting a new weekly, a private paper not so much a 
 party journal as Commonweal, and bigger, as he is to be 
 backed by money. He wanted my goodwill, which he 
 is welcome to ; but I distrust the long endurance of a 
 paper at all commercial, unless there is plenty of money 
 at its back. Champion spoke in a friendly way and was 
 quite open and reasonable ; but seems out of spirits about 
 the movement : he has been extremely over-sanguine 
 about getting people to 1 show their strength/ which of 
 course they won't do at present, as soon as it looks dan- 
 gerous, and so he is correspondingly depressed at the 
 poor performance of the Social Democratic Federation in 
 agitation lately. 
 
 cc Next Sunday they are going to have a 4 Church-pa- 
 rade, at St. Paul's : but unless they can get an enormous 
 crowd, it will be a silly business, and if they do there 
 will be a row ; which got up in this way I think a mis- 
 take ; take this for my word about the sort of thing : 
 if a riot is quite spontaneous it does frighten the bourgeois 
 even if it [is] but isolated ; but planned riots or shows 
 of force are no good unless in a time of aftion, when 
 
176 THE LIFE OF [1887 
 
 they are backed by the opinion of the people and are in 
 point of fad: indications of the rising tide. . . . 
 
 cc Feb. 23rd. I had a sort of threat of gout the last 
 days of last week, so kept myself quiet at home. 
 
 u Sunday for same reason I did not speak out of doors. 
 I went to Mitcham (the branch) on Sunday evening and 
 spoke extemporary to them at their club-room, a tumble- 
 down shed opposite the grand new workhouse built by 
 the Holborn Union : amongst the woeful hovels that 
 make up the worse (and newer) part of Mitcham, which 
 was once a pretty place with its old street and greens and 
 lavender fields. Except a German from Wimbledon 
 (who was in the chair) and two others who looked like 
 artisans of the painter or small builder type, the audience 
 was all made up of labourers and their wives : they were 
 very quiet and attentive except one man who was 
 courageous from liquor, and interrupted sympathetically: 
 but I doubt if most of them understood anything I said ; 
 though some few of them showed that they did by ap- 
 plauding the points. I wonder sometimes if people will 
 remember in times to come to what a depth of degrada- 
 tion the ordinary English workman has been reduced; I 
 felt very downcast amongst these poor people in their 
 poor hutch whose opening I attended some three months 
 back (and they were rather proud of it). There were 
 but about 2 5 present : yet I felt as if I might be doing 
 some good there. . . . 
 
 " Monday was Council-night again, and I attended. 
 Poor Allman had been before the magistrate that day 
 and fined 40^,, and was sent to jail in default of pay- 
 ment : his offence was open-air preaching close to the 
 meeting-place of the Hackney Branch: so we are begin- 
 ning our troubles early this year ; which is a great nuis- 
 ance ; but I don't see what is to be done : we can't give 
 up street-preaching in spite of what Bax and one or two 
 
mt. 53] WILLIAM MORRIS 177 
 
 others say about its uselessness : yet the police if they 
 persist can put us down ; and unless we can get up a very 
 good case of causeless interference on their part, and 
 consequent presumption of unfairness against us, we shall 
 not be able to enlist the Radical clubs on our side, which 
 is our only chance. At the Council we agreed not to 
 pay Allman's fine, as he cried out loudly against it ; and 
 I believe meant it, as he is a courageous little man. . . . 
 I may note here for the benefit of well-to-do West- 
 enders that the police are incredibly rough and brutal to 
 the poor people in the East end ; and that they treated 
 Allman very ill. ... I may as well say here that my in- 
 tention is if possible to prevent the quarrel coming to a 
 head between the two sections, parliamentary and anti- 
 parliamentary, which are pretty much commensurate 
 with the Colledtivists and Anarchists : and this because 
 I believe there would be a good many who would join 
 the Anarchist side who are not really Anarchists, and 
 who would be useful to us : indeed I doubt if, except 
 one or two Germans, etc., we have any real Anarchists 
 amongst us : and I don't want to see a lot of enthusiastic 
 men who are not very deep in Socialist dodlrines driven 
 off for a fad of the more pedantic part of the Colledlivist 
 sedion. . . . 
 
 " Yesterday all day long with Bax trying to get our 
 second article on Marx together : a very difficult job : 
 I hope it may be worth the trouble. 
 
 " News of the German eledions to-day : the Socialists 
 seem to be going to lose seats (and no wonder consider- 
 ing Bismarck's iron fist), but they are gaining numbers 
 according to the voting. 
 
 " Sparling went down on Monday night to Reading 
 to try to found a branch, after the good reception 
 which he and Carruthers had there last week : but it 
 was a dead failure : a good many had given their names 
 
 II. N 
 
THE LIFE OF 
 
 [1887 
 
 to attend, but when it came to the scratch c with one con- 
 sent they ali began to make excuse* : I note this because 
 it is characteristic of the present stage of the movement ; 
 for as above said there was plenty of agreement at the 
 meetings we have held there. This hanging-back is 
 partly fear of being boycotted by the masters ; but 
 chiefly from dislike to organization, for a question which 
 the c respe&able 9 political parties ignore ; and also fear 
 of anything like revolt or revolution. . . . 
 
 u March 3rd. Sunday I spoke at Beadon Road ; fair 
 attendance of the usual kind ; I met a posse of horse 
 police going to St. Paul's apropos of the S. D. F.'s 
 Church-parade there; and there were also a crowd of 
 police at the Metropolitan station. . . . 
 
 " The S. D. F. Church-parade went off well : they 
 ought not to spoil it by having inferior ones at small 
 churches now ; but should change the entertainment. 
 Which remark points to the weak side of their ta£tics: 
 they must always be getting up some fresh excitement, 
 or else making the thing stale and at last ridiculous; so 
 that they are rather in the position of a hard-pressed 
 manager of a theatre — what are they to do next ? . . . 
 
 " March 9th. It is clear that the Government is in a 
 shaky condition. The Union Liberals are beginning to 
 see that the cat is going to jump the other way : Tre- 
 velyan made a speech at Devonshire House this week 
 as good as renouncing the Tory alliance: so it seems the 
 Liberal party is to be re-united on the basis of a Com- 
 promise Home Rule Bill ; which will last as long as the 
 Irish find convenient. Meantime the Government are 
 threatening a very harsh Coercion Bill: indeed I shouldn't 
 wonder if they were to make it as stiff as possible in 
 order to insure their own defeat, and then were to appeal 
 to the country on the ground of law and order. All 
 this is blessed bread to us, even the re-union of the 
 
jet. 53] WILLIAM MORRIS 
 
 179 
 
 Liberal party ; because after all, that means the Whigs 
 still retaining their hold of it, the stripping it more and 
 more of anything which could enable it to pose as a 
 popular party ; while on the other hand it cripples the 
 Radicals, and takes away all chance of their forming a 
 popular party underneath the more advanced Liberals : 
 so that in politics the break-up of the old parties and 
 the formation of a strong reactionary party goes on 
 apace. . . . 
 
 " Sunday I went to the new premises of the Hoxton 
 Branch (the Labour Emancipation League) to ledure: 
 I rather liked it : a queer little no-shaped slip cut off from 
 some workshop or other, neatly whitewashed, with some 
 innocent decoration obviously by the decorator member 
 of the branch : all very poor but showing signs of sticking 
 to it : the room full of a new audience of the usual type 
 of attenders at such places : all working men except a 
 parson in the front row, and perhaps a clerk or two, the 
 opposition represented by a fool of the debating club 
 type ; but our men glad of any opposition at all. I heard 
 that our branch ledture was a wretched failure. The 
 fa6t is our branch, which was very vigorous a little time 
 ago, is sick now ; the men want some little new thing to 
 be doing or they get slack in attendance. I must try to 
 push them together a bit. I attended the Council meet- 
 ing on Monday. It was in the end quarrelsome. . . . 
 We passed a resolution pra&ically bidding our speakers 
 not to draw on quarrels with the police : though I doubt 
 if they will heed it often : as some of them are ambitious 
 of figuring as heroes in this c free-speech ' business. This 
 is a pity ; as if the police stick to it, they can of course 
 beat us in the long run : and we have more out-a-door 
 stations already than we can man properly. . . . 
 
 " March 20th. The annual meeting of our Hammer- 
 smith Branch came off : a dead failure, as all our meetings 
 
180 THE LIFE OF [1887 
 
 except the open-air ones have been lately. However I 
 really think the savage second winter has had something 
 to do with it ; we have had a hard frost for nearly a fort- 
 night now, and often a bitter blast of the N.E. with it ; 
 and our stable-meeting-room is not very warmable under 
 such conditions. 
 
 cc I lectured in the Chiswick Club Hall and had a scanty 
 audience and a dull. It was a new ledlure, and good, 
 though I say it, and I really did my best ; but they hung 
 on my hands as heavy as lead. The open-air meeting at 
 Walham Green in the morning was very creditable con- 
 sidering the cold weather and the underfoot misery. 
 
 "March 24th. 53 years old to-day — no use grumbling 
 at that." 
 
 The diary is continued for a month longer, but becomes 
 more fragmentary as it goes on, and is filled in at longer 
 intervals. On the 27th of April it ends, with the note, 
 " I have been busy about many things, and so unable to 
 fill up this book." 
 
 Among these many things was his Odyssey. <f I have 
 just finished the 16th book," he writes to his daughter on 
 the 1 8th of February, " and am getting the first volume 
 through the press." This first volume was published 
 early in April, and the second volume followed in 
 November. It was received with the respedt due to its 
 merits. The first edition was sold out in six weeks : but 
 it never became really popular, nor has it taken a place 
 as the standard English version of Homer. It is perhaps 
 one of the cases in which the disparity between the nature 
 of the original and the method of rendering is no less vital 
 because it lies below the surface. When Morris published 
 the translation of the iEneid, the first criticism that 
 occurred to many of his readers was that Homer rather 
 than Virgil, and of the Homeric poems the Odyssey 
 rather than the Iliad, was what he would render with 
 
jet. 54] WILLIAM MORRIS 181 
 
 the greatest sympathy and success. This may now be 
 doubted. Notwithstanding his deep love and admira- 
 tion for the Icelandic epics, notwithstanding the essenti- 
 ally Homeric tone of his own great Volsung epic, the 
 romantic element in Virgil was perhaps more nearly akin 
 to his own most intimate poetical instindts than the 
 broader and more impersonal treatment which puts the 
 Iliad and Odyssey in a class of poetry by themselves. 
 It may further be questioned whether the metre chosen, 
 admirably as it represents the Greek hexameter as regards 
 length of line and rapidity of movement, is not one which 
 lays traps for a translator by the very ease and variation 
 of which its rhythm admits. 
 
 Morris prided himself upon the fidelity of his version 
 to the original: cc My translation is a real one so far," he 
 wrote of it to Ellis while it was in progress, " not a mere 
 periphrase of the original as all the others are." But a 
 translation, whether of Homer or of any other great poet, 
 which sets out to be literal, must of necessity incur the 
 risk of a certain flatness and commonness in passages 
 where the original is only poetical by virtue of some un- 
 transferable quality. More especially is this the case in 
 rendering from the Greek. That wonderful language 
 almost makes poetry of itself ; it is at once the model and 
 the despair of all other languages. A translation which 
 aims at a high standard of literal accuracy doubles the 
 difficulty, in any case immensely great, of reproducing the 
 continuous dignity and elevation of Homer. And a metre 
 of loose structure invites the evasion of difficulties which 
 are perhaps insoluble, and at all events are not solved in 
 the least by being evaded. The epic hexameter, with all 
 its elasticity, is accurately uniform in its metrical strudture: 
 it carries the poem forward unswervingly and unfalter- 
 ingly. But the Sigurd-metre of Morris's Odyssey, with 
 an elasticity equal to that of the Greek hexameter itself, 
 
1 82 THE LIFE OF [1887 
 
 and a power (due to the great variation of which it 
 admits) of attaining certain astonishing effe&s, suffers 
 from this very quality in a tendency to relapse into form- 
 lessness. It is apt to revert into the mere inchoate metre 
 from which it and the hexameter are both historical 
 evolutions. 
 
 This tendency adts in two ways : in one way by strip- 
 ping the metre, as one might say, to the bone. The 
 couplet, 
 
 They sat and fell to feasting, and men of worth rose up 
 And poured the wine unto them in many a golden cup, 
 
 goes back to the metre of the Niebelungenlied, of 
 Naevius's tc Punic War," and in all probability of the 
 lost Greek epics, out of which was gradually evolved 
 what we know by the name of Homer. But on the 
 other hand it is apt to become overloaded. In lines 
 like 
 
 Whether he should pray to the fair-faced, laying hand 
 upon her knee, 
 
 or, 
 
 Bides she still with my child, and steadfast yet guardeth 
 all my good ? 
 
 the laxity of the metre allows it to pass into something; 
 that is barely metrical. In original writing the ear and 
 taste of a good craftsman will keep him safe from both 
 extremes. But in a translation, as all translators know, 
 there is a temptation almost irresistible to take advan- 
 tage of any licence the metre allows, a little here and a 
 little there, till at last the accumulated result goes far 
 beyond what the translator had meant or what the reader 
 can readily approve. This is the reason why a successful 
 
jet. 54] WILLIAM MORRIS 183 
 
 verse translation, be it of Homer or Virgil or any other 
 great poet, must be executed in a metre of accurate 
 structure. 
 
 Morris was too conscientious an artist, and too deeply 
 in sympathy with the spirit of the Saga, whether Greek 
 or Northern, to make things easier for his readers by 
 modernizations of language or sentiment, or by slurring 
 whatever in the original is weak, or verbose, or in any 
 way repellent to modern feeling. There is a measure of 
 truth in what he said of the translation himself before 
 it appeared : " I don't think the public will take to it ; 
 it is too like Homer. ,, In fadt, when due allowance is 
 made for this defedt in the medium chosen, one may 
 well wonder that in a language which is so different from 
 Greek, and which, with all its own merits, has so little 
 of the specific Greek beauty, Morris succeeded in pro- 
 ducing such radiant effects as he does. And if his 
 translation has not become the standard English version, 
 it is only because that place still remains empty. 
 
 Of another kind of calls on his time there is a ludicrous 
 instance in a letter to his daughter written this spring. 
 c< Comes me here on Tuesday one of our Oxford Street 
 chaps and says will I go call on a lady near Hans Place 
 about some decoration. So yesterday I go — grumbling, 
 but thinking like John Gilpin about the loss of pence : 
 and coming to Hans Place find it a very architedtoora- 
 looral region : knock at the door : am shown into the 
 drawing-room, when enter to me a lady who, after a 
 very short preamble, requests me to look at some deco- 
 ration that she was doing in the poker-style you know, 
 burning the pattern in : and with a view of my helping 
 her to a sale of these articles ; her husband by the way 
 being a swell in the War Office. My dear, the im- 
 pudence of women is great ; ask your Mama if she don't 
 think so. Moreover I was too much amused, and also 
 
184 THE LIFE OF [1887 
 
 flabbergasted, to walk out of the house without a word, 
 so I had to finish my morning call with great gravity ; 
 a morning call also for which I can't see my way for 
 charging. How May did laugh at me when I came 
 home ! 99 
 
 " I must tell you, my dear," he says in another letter 
 a little later, " that I am getting famous, or at least 
 notorious,, in Hammersmith town. The other day 
 opposite the Nazareth a covered greengrocer's cart 
 hailed me as c Socialist!' and then as c Morris!' I 
 don't think this was meant to be complimentary. Also 
 a week ago as I was going down Rivercourt Road, lo a 
 small boy, chubby, about seven years old, sitting swing- 
 ing on one of the iron gates, very uncomfortably I 
 should think, as they have sort of cabbage ornaments, 
 sings out to me: ( Have a ride, Morris ! ' At these 
 two places I was known : but last Sunday it befel me to 
 go to Vi&oria Park (beyond Bethnal Green) to a meet- 
 ing. Now I have mounted a cape or cloak, grey in 
 colour, so that people doubt whether I be a brigand or 
 a parson : this seemed too picturesque for some ' Arrys 
 who were passing by, and sung out after me, c Shake- 
 speare, yah ! ' 99 
 
 All through that hot summer of the Queen's Jubilee 
 he stayed in London, busily trying to keep the Socialist 
 League together, and working hard at Merton against 
 the continued depression of trade, but not too anxious 
 to enjoy life in a way that he could hardly have done 
 the year before. A few extracts from letters written 
 during these summer months may be added here. 
 
 <f I am trying to get the League to make peace with 
 each other and hold together for another year. It is a 
 tough job ; something like the worst kind of pig-driving 
 I should think, and sometimes I lose my temper over it. 
 It is so bewilderingly irritating to see perfectly honest 
 
jet. 54] WILLIAM MORRIS 185 
 
 men, very enthusiastic, and not at all self-seeking, and less 
 stupid than most people, squabble so : and withal for the 
 most part they are personally good friends together." 
 
 " It was almost too good to be true to hear the rain 
 tinkling on the leaves when I woke about half-past four, 
 and O how pleasant it did feel ! I have looked at Lewis 
 Morris's Ode ; and looked away from it in wonder why 
 people write odes : as Huck Finn would say, if I had 
 a yaller dog that took to writing odes I would shoot 
 him." 
 
 " On Tuesday our water-party did a&ually come off, 
 Aglaia, Opie and Mr. Leaf being the other ones besides 
 Janey, Jenny and self. It turned out quite a success ; 
 we went by train to Richmond and then took a boat and 
 went up to Hampton Court by slow degrees, rowing, 
 sailing, and towing. We got to the Palace just half an 
 hour before closing-time of the building, but didn't mind 
 about that. Our other male-man got out coming back 
 at Surbiton, so that we were rather late ; didn't get to 
 Teddington Lock till after 8 ; so that it was full night 
 when we came out of it. So I had to set poor Aglaia 
 to steer in the dark, or the dusk rather, as Jenny is 
 short-sighted and Janey was too tired, and the two girls 
 had been rowing a good bit already, so that I had to 
 row till we were close to Richmond again. Aglaia was 
 (naturally) nervous and kept on mistaking c nature's 
 boskage,' or its shadow rather, for barges : but she did 
 very well after all and we mightily enjoyed ourselves ; 
 Jenny especially, who was delighted with the night row- 
 ing and the glitter of the lights of Richmond Hill in the 
 water, and the rather terrifying mysteries of a river by 
 night. 
 
 " An improvement is to be noted at Hampton Court 
 by the way. They have cleaned the tapestries ; and 
 taken the piece that used to be under the gallery and 
 
186 THE LIFE OF [1887 
 
 hung it in the Drawing Room so that it is quite visible, 
 and have added another piece to it which I have never 
 seen before and which is very fine. The Triumph of 
 Time, also at the end of the Drawing Room, now it is 
 cleaned shows a most splendid work : also they have 
 opened a small room next to the Drawing Room, and 
 that also is hung with tapestries, inferior to these, but 
 still verv beautiful." 
 
 <f This morning, as it is fresh and fair after the rain, I 
 am going to throw dull care away and have a holiday, 
 to wit I am going to Hampton Court by myself to look 
 at the tapestries and loaf about the gardens." 
 
 tc I don't know if you saw an article about the Work- 
 ing Men's Clubs in the Daily News t'other day. I who 
 know a good deal about these institutions grinned sar- 
 donically at its conventional rose-water. There is only 
 a very small nucleus of really political working men : at 
 Chiswick with a membership of 300 there are about 14 
 who interest themselves in politics : the Hackney Club 
 1,600 members, and about 100 political ones. Sunday 
 beer, and weekday cards and billiards, are the real at- 
 traction. Moreover quite in contradiction to what the 
 D. N. states, the only political working men's clubs at 
 all that are even worth mentioning are much infused 
 with Socialism." 
 
 " I have had one holiday this week : I went to see 
 the Flowers (human) at Tangley Manor. It is a very 
 beautiful old house: the old 14th century hall, at least 
 its chief beam, being built up into a house of 1582. I 
 grudged the vanishing of the older house in spite of the 
 beauty of the other. A moat it has and a stone wall with 
 holes in it, and many things desired by the righteous ; 
 and the country around is pleasant. But Lord ! if I 
 lived there, what a state of terror I should be in lest 
 they should begin to build up round about. There is a 
 
/ZT. 54] 
 
 WILLIAM MORRIS 
 
 187 
 
 beautiful pile of old barns fronting it which does not 
 belong to Flower, but to a man who thinks that he looks 
 upon them as an eyesore and wants to buy them to pull 
 them down ; and therefore he keeps them up, in order 
 to stimulate Flower to bid a higher price for the land 
 than it is worth." 
 
 "I have now" (August 25th) "committed the irre- 
 mediable error of finishing the Odyssey, all but a little 
 bit of fair-copying. I am rather sad thereat.'' 
 
 "It is a beautiful bright autumn morning here, as 
 fresh as daisies : and I am not over-inclined for my 
 morning preachment at Walham Green, but go I must, 
 as also to Victoria Park in the afternoon. I had a sort 
 of dastardly hope that it might rain. Mind you, I don't 
 pretend to say that I don't like it in some way or other, 
 when I am on my legs. I fear I am an inveterate word- 
 spinner and not good for much else." 
 
 " I had three very good days at Kelmscott " (in Sep- 
 tember) : cc once or twice I had that delightful quicken- 
 ing of perception by which everything gets emphasized 
 and brightened, and the commonest landscape looks 
 lovely ; anxieties and worrits, though remembered, yet 
 no weight on one's spirits — Heaven in short. It comes 
 not very commonly even in one's younger and brighter 
 days, and doesn't quite leave one even in the times of 
 combat." 
 
 Late in that autumn was produced the most singular 
 of all Morris's literary adventures, the little play entitled 
 <c The Tables Turned, or Nupkins Awakened." u I 
 have been writing," he says on the 24th of September, 
 u a — what ? — an c interlude ' let 's call it, to be adted at 
 Farringdon Road for the benefit of Commonweal." It 
 was performed there on the 1 5th of O&ober, Morris him- 
 self afting in it, and was so successful that it was repeated 
 three times. The dramatic form was one which he had 
 
188 THE LIFE OF [1887 
 
 essayed long before in a very different material " Sir 
 Peter Harpdons End," "The Fall of Troy," and "Love 
 is Enough," are a trilogy which is strangely concluded 
 by this satyric piece. 
 
 In the contemporary theatre and in the modern adtor's 
 art Morris had not, and never affedted to have, the 
 slightest interest. From a very different point of view, 
 he had for many years come to the same conclusion as 
 Matthew Arnold in pronouncing the modern English 
 theatre the most debased in Europe. Since the days of 
 his early enthusiasm for Robson and Kean he hardly ever 
 had gone to a play, unless on some rare occasion when 
 he took his children or was dragged off by a friend. Nor 
 has cc The Tables Turned" anything that can be called 
 a plot, any dramatic artifice, or any charafterization be- 
 yond that of a mediaeval mystery play e c< If he had 
 started a Kelmscott Theatre," says one of the most en- 
 thusiastic and most paradoxical of his followers, " instead 
 of the Kelmscott Press, I am quite confident that in a 
 few months, without going half a mile afield for his 
 company, he would have produced work that would 
 within ten years have affe&ed every theatre in Europe." 
 As a personal impression this assertion is interesting, but 
 unverifiable. As a matter of fad nothing came of the 
 experiment in which the method of the Townley Mys- 
 teries was applied to a modern farce. c< Morris was so 
 interested," the critic just quoted adds, "by his experi- 
 ment in this sort of composition that he for some time 
 talked of trying his hand at a serious drama, and would 
 no doubt have done it had there been any pradtical occa- 
 sion for it, or any means of consummating it by stage 
 representation under proper conditions, without spend- 
 ing more time on the job than it was worth. It was 
 impossible for such a born teller and devourer of stories 
 as he was to be indifferent to an art which is nothing 
 
jet. 54] WILLIAM MORRIS 189 
 
 more than the most vivid and real of all ways of story- 
 telling." It is certainly true that he was just then cast- 
 ing about for some new method of expressing the thought 
 working inside him, and getting rid of his superabundant 
 creative energy. So it had always been in all his prac- 
 tice of the arts : no sooner had he mastered one art — 
 were it illuminating, or carpet- weaving, or narrative 
 poetry — than he passed eagerly on to master another : 
 and just now, c< rather lost," as he says, " with the con- 
 clusion of my Odyssey job, and on the look-out for 
 another," he may have thought now and then of the 
 dramatic form as one in which he might begin a new 
 and interesting series of researches and experiments in 
 order to recover, as in the other arts, the dropped thread 
 of the mediaeval tradition. But if so, it was not seriously, 
 nor for long : and in the series of prose romances which 
 he began soon afterwards, and which were continued 
 through the remaining years of his life, he found a 
 vehicle of new expression more satisfying to his imagina- 
 tion and better suited to his familiar methods. 
 
 The part which Morris himself took in the play was 
 that of the Archbishop of Canterbury, who was supposed 
 to have been called as a witness for the defence in a 
 police prosecution of a member of the Socialist League. 
 The charge was one of obstruction and incitement to 
 riot by speaking from a stool (as Morris so often did) 
 on a Sunday forenoon at Beadon Road, Hammersmith. 
 " Under the pretext of paying a visit to my brother of 
 London," the Archbishop had got into a cab and gone off 
 to see what these Socialist meetings were like. " To the 
 best of my remembrance," he states in evidence, <c there 
 were present at the commencement of your discourse but 
 three persons exclusive of yourself" — namely, a colleague 
 of the lecturer, the Archbishop himself, and a small boy. 
 The discourse " was a mass of the most frightful incen- 
 
i 9 o THE LIFE OF [1887 
 
 diarism. He even made an attack on my position, stating 
 (wrongly) the amount of my moderate stipend. " The 
 audience, he further states, had increased to ten by the 
 time the orator concluded. The scene, which was re- 
 ceived by the audience, most of them familiar with those 
 Sunday street meetings, with uncontrolled amusement, 
 gave the ludicrous side of a bitter truth. Often Morris 
 had himself spoken, both in doors and out of doors, to 
 as small an audience. A few months earlier, a lecture 
 on Feudal England, into which no other man alive could 
 have put an equal combination of historical knowledge, 
 imaginative insight, and romantic sympathy, had been 
 delivered to an audience of nine people, not one of whom 
 probably understood what it was about. That such 
 entire public apathy regarding the Socialist ideal should 
 co-exist with the presence of revolution actually at the 
 door (the trial in this play is broken off by its triumphal 
 outbreak) is a situation well enough suited for a farce 
 which is intentionally and wildly extravagant. But it 
 seems that even then the combination was one in which 
 the more ardent members of the League had not in the 
 least abandoned belief. 
 
 For that strange belief, in which Morris no doubt had 
 once to a certain degree shared ( cc as his way was about 
 everything, to make it something different from what it 
 was," the habit of boyhood surviving undiminished into 
 mature life), the events of the next month in London 
 gave some sort of colour. A long-continued depression 
 of trade had made the question of the unemployed, in 
 London and elsewhere, more than usually serious ; and 
 the restlessness among the working classes culminated in 
 the famous scenes of the 13 th of November, " Bloody 
 Sunday," in and round Trafalgar Square. A meeting in 
 the Square had been announced to protest against the 
 Irish policy of the Government : it had been proclaimed 
 
jet. 54] WILLIAM MORRIS 191 
 
 by the police, and became converted into a demonstration 
 on a huge scale. No one who saw it will ever forget 
 the strange and indeed terrible sight of that grey winter 
 day, the vast sombre-coloured crowd, the brief but fierce 
 struggle at the corner of the Strand, and the river of 
 steel and scarlet that moved slowly through the dusky 
 swaying masses when two squadrons of the Life Guards 
 were summoned up from Whitehall. Morris himself 
 did not see it till all was nearly over. He had marched 
 with one of the columns which were to converge on 
 Trafalgar Square from all quarters. It started in good 
 order to the number of five or six thousand from Clerken- 
 well Green, but at the crossing of Shaftesbury Avenue 
 was attacked in front and on both flanks by a strong 
 force of police. They charged into it with great violence, 
 striking right and left indiscriminately. In a few 
 minutes it was helplessly broken up. Only disorganized 
 fragments straggled into the Square, to find that the other 
 columns had also been headed off or crushed, and that 
 the day was pradically over. Preparations had been 
 made to repel something little short of a popular insurrec- 
 tion. An immense police force had been concentrated, 
 and in the afternoon the Square was lined by a battalion 
 of Foot Guards, with fixed bayonets and twenty rounds of 
 ball cartridge. For an hour or two the danger was im- 
 minent of street-fighting such as had not been known in 
 London for more than a century. But the organized 
 force at the disposal of the civil authorities proved suf- 
 ficient to check the insurgent columns and finally clear 
 the streets without a shot being fired. For some weeks 
 afterwards the Square was garrisoned by special drafts of 
 police. Otherwise London next day had resumed its 
 usual aspedt. 
 
 Once more the London Socialists had drawn into line 
 with the great mass of the London Radicals, and a for- 
 
192 THE LIFE OF [1887 
 
 midable popular movement had resulted, which on that 
 Sunday was within a very little of culminating in a 
 frightful loss of life and the practical establishment of a 
 state of siege in London. But the English spirit of 
 compromise soon made itself felt. While on the one 
 hand the impotence of a London crowd against armed 
 and drilled forces had been crushingly demonstrated, on 
 the other hand the public were startled into seriousness. 
 Measures were taken for the relief of the unemployed. 
 Political Radicalism resumed its normal occupations; 
 and by the end of the year the Socialist League had 
 dropped back to its old place, a small body of enthusiasts 
 among whom an Anarchist group were now beginning to 
 assume a distind prominence. The only other important 
 public occasion in which Morris took part during the 
 rest of the year was on the 18th of December. A young 
 man named Alfred Linnell had died in hospital from in- 
 juries received from the police in the struggle of Bloody 
 Sunday. A public funeral was organized. In pouring 
 rain a great but orderly crowd marched through the 
 mid-winter dusk from Soho to Bow Cemetery, where 
 the burial service was read by the light of a lantern. 
 The stately verses which Morris wrote for the occasion 
 are well known. Less known, but perhaps not less 
 worthy of remembrance, is the brief speech which he 
 delivered over the grave. The other speakers — Mr. 
 Tims of Battersea, Mr. Dowling of the Irish National 
 League, Mr. Quelch of the Social Democratic Federa- 
 tion — had improved the occasion with obvious sincerity, 
 but in phrases that were rapidly becoming mere com- 
 monplaces of journalism and losing any definite mean- 
 ing : protesting against what they described as the auto- 
 cracy of the police, speaking of hired murderers in 
 uniform, and a ruling class trembling in its shoes. 
 Morris's words, spoken to a crowd fast melting away in 
 
jet. 54] WILLIAM MORRIS 193 
 
 the darkness and rain, tried to recall the larger and 
 nobler issue. " Our friend who lies here has had a hard 
 life, and met with a hard death ; and if society had been 
 differently constituted, his life might have been a delight- 
 ful, a beautiful, and a happy one. It is our business to 
 begin to organize for the purpose of seeing that such 
 things shall not happen ; to try and make this earth a 
 beautiful and happy place." 
 
 " The scene at the grave," he writes a few days 
 afterwards, " was the strangest sight I have ever seen, I 
 think. It was most impressive to witness ; there was to 
 me something aweful (I can use no other word) in such 
 a tremendous mass of people, unorganized, unhelped, 
 and so harmless and good-tempered." 
 
 This feeling of pity for the helplessness of the masses 
 had throughout stood alongside of his indignation at the 
 practical barbarism of the commercial system as the 
 dominant force in his mind. When he saw the multi- 
 tudes — if we may recall in so different a context the 
 august words of the Evangelist — he was moved with 
 compassion on them, because they fainted, and were 
 scattered abroad as sheep having no shepherd. The 
 diredl result of all his efforts to bring them together and 
 lead them on was indeed little enough. The smallness 
 of the numbers of really convinced supporters, however 
 much the opportunist sedtion of English Socialists might 
 try to swell them out by various bodies of men in buck- 
 ram, was a faft to which he never blinded himself, nor 
 was he less keenly alive to the prodigious difficulty of 
 accustoming men's minds in England to conceive the 
 possibility of any changes being effected by other than 
 the familiar Parliamentary methods. cc I have always 
 known," he writes on the 26th of February, 1887, to 
 Ellis, " that if ever there were a Socialist party in Eng- 
 land they would have to send men to Parliament, though 
 
 11. o 
 
194 THE LIFE OF [1887 
 
 I certainly wouldn't be one of them. But 'tis no more 
 use a se£i blustering about getting itself c represented ' 
 than it is about its conquering the world by dynamite 
 and battle. 'Tis barely possible to get a Radical re- 
 turned as a Radical, let alone a Socialist. Still things 
 have moved much within the last four years, and they 
 will no more stop for the capitalists than they will hurry 
 for me." But it was not all waste labour. cc Men fight 
 and lose the battle," says John Ball, " and the thing that 
 they fought for comes about in spite of their defeat, and 
 when it comes turns out not to be what they meant." 
 The silent permeation of a new spirit was making itself 
 felt. The docftrines on which Socialism is founded were 
 slowly beginning to modify common thought. Edu- 
 cation towards revolution, Morris's own watchword as a 
 Socialist, was in one sense or another rapidly becoming 
 the order of the day. In the larger sphere of politics a 
 change of tone was beginning to be manifest. Signi- 
 ficant utterances began to be heard from supporters of 
 the existing organization. The celebrated words, " We 
 are all Socialists now," had already been uttered by an 
 ex- Minister in the House of Commons. Professed 
 Socialists had been invited to read papers at the Church 
 Congress, and a Bishop had startled his colleagues by 
 publicly declaring the contrast between the rich and 
 poor to be so appalling that serious consideration was due 
 to any scheme, no matter how revolutionary, that pro- 
 mised relief. And about Morris himself a group of 
 artists and craftsmen were gathering, who, without fol- 
 lowing his principles to their logical issues or joining any 
 Socialist organization, were profoundly permeated with 
 his ideas on their most fruitful side, that of the re- 
 generation, by continued and combined individual effort, 
 of the decaying arts of life. Among these men, a small 
 body, but growing in numbers, strong in youth, ardent 
 
jet. 54] WILLIAM MORRIS 195 
 
 in assured convidtion, Morris's final words on the 
 Beauty of Life were at last working with their full 
 force. cc To us who have a cause at heart, our highest 
 ambition and our simplest duty are one and the same 
 thing. For the most part we shall be too busy doing 
 the work that lies ready to our hands to let impatience 
 for visibly great progress vex us much. And surely, 
 since we are servants of a cause, hope must be ever 
 with us." 
 
 Cela est bien dit, repondit Candide, mais il faut cultiver 
 notre jardin. Such too had been the last word of the 
 despised eighteenth century. 
 
CHAPTER XVIII 
 
 SIGNS of change: the arts and crafts: return 
 
 TO ROMANCE 
 
 1888-1889 
 
 This group of craftsmen were drawn together from many 
 different quarters and worked in very various methods ; 
 but each in his own sphere, all alike consciously aimed at 
 a Renaissance of the decorative arts which should aft at 
 once through and towards more humanized conditions of 
 life both for the workman and for those for whom he 
 worked. There were few if any among them who would 
 not readily have acknowledged Morris as their master. 
 The seed sown twenty-seven years before in the little 
 workshop in Red Lion Square had long been silently and 
 unostentatiously bearing fruit. Of those whose pradtice 
 had long been moulded by Morris's influence, there 
 were not a few for whom the ideas which underlay the 
 whole of his work had, when they took definite shape 
 as a body of dodtrine, added a quickened impulse and a 
 higher enthusiasm. Socialism, less as a definite creed or 
 a dogmatic system than as a way of looking at human 
 life and the meaning of the arts, was widely diffused among 
 a younger generation of artists. Among these Mr. Walter 
 Crane, by his versatility and energy, as well as the ac- 
 knowledged excellence of his artistic work, held a leading 
 place. Mr. T. J. Cobden-Sanderson brought to the move- 
 ment an energy as great, united with the gift of a copious 
 and persuasive eloquence. Among the younger men 
 
jet. 54] THE LIFE OF WILLIAM MORRIS 197 
 
 Mr. Heywood Sumner, Mr. W. R. Lethaby, and Mr. 
 W. A. S. Benson may be singled out as prominent mem- 
 bers of the group. Only a few out of the whole body were, 
 either then or subsequently, professed Socialists. Some 
 of them were Conservative or even ultra-Conservative in 
 politics. But they all in their special lines of work carried 
 out ideas of which Morris was the original source. To 
 them, and to many others, he has been, both while he 
 lived and afterwards, an inspiring and guiding influence 
 of the first importance. 
 
 Alongside of this movement, or rather essentially in- 
 cluded in it, was another movement towards a re-integra- 
 tion of labour, a practical socialism of handicraft as applied 
 to the arts. This movement expressed itself in two ways. 
 On the one hand it aimed at a new organization of work 
 within the single workshop, so that the manager, the de- 
 signer, and the artificer should cease to be three distinct 
 persons belonging to different social grades, differently 
 educated and differently employed, working without 
 mutual sympathy, or even each in active hostility to the 
 others. On the other hand it expressed itself in the co- 
 ordination of these workshops, hitherto isolated units of 
 productive energy, whether by means of formal guilds 
 and associations, or through more intangible links of 
 common ideas and kindred enthusiasms, into the begin- 
 nings of a trained organism of handicraftsmen, with a 
 mutual intercommunication, and a cumulative force of 
 trained intelligence. What Morris himself had, in earlier 
 days, done by the mere unassisted force of his own genius, 
 was now being attempted on all sides with a conscious 
 purpose. His own work in the early sixties had been 
 based on two principles : the first, that nothing should be 
 done in his workshops which he did not know how to do 
 himself ; and the second, that every form of decorative 
 art could be subsumed under the single head of architec- 
 
198 THE LIFE OF [1888 
 
 ture, and had only a real life and intelligible meaning in 
 its relation to the mistress-art, and through the mistress- 
 art to all the other subordinate arts. Following out these 
 principles, his pupils were now occupied, first, in learning 
 what it was they had to deal with by a&ual work at the 
 lathe, or the dye-vat, or the mason's yard, and then in 
 forming, by the co-ordination and communication of this 
 pradical knowledge, the basis for a really popular art such 
 as had not existed within the memory of men now living. 
 
 The sense of corporate life among this group of artists 
 and workmen had by this time reached a point where it 
 demanded some visible expression. There was already 
 a sort of freemasonry among them. The Art Workers' 
 Guild, established in March, 1884, had become a great 
 influence towards solidarity. But now an increased mo- 
 tive power might, it was thought, be given to the move- 
 ment by arranging for periodical public exhibitions of 
 work done. These exhibitions were to be combined with 
 some amount of instruction by acknowledged masters in 
 both the theory and the practice of the various handicrafts. 
 The beginning of this project has been dated from a 
 correspondence which had been carried on some three 
 years before in the Times on the subject of reform of 
 the Royal Academy. It had long been a surprise or 
 scandal to many that the Academy of Arts should confine 
 itself rigidly to painting and sculpture and what may be 
 called abstract architecture, and should ignore all the 
 other decorative and applied arts. But public opinion 
 could not be roused to press for the reform of this bad 
 tradition. The attempt to do so, not for the first or last 
 time, came to nothing : and it was then that the sugges- 
 tion arose of a separate exhibition of products of applied 
 art. So early as 1858 the question had been raised by 
 Madox Brown in connexion with the exhibitions held by 
 the newly-founded Hogarth Club. The committee of the 
 
mt. 54] WILLIAM MORRIS i 99 
 
 club had then refused to hang his designs for furniture, 
 as not being examples of " fine art proper." Their deci- 
 sion was quite in consonance with the traditions of that 
 day. But the Pre-Raphaelites themselves were strongly 
 represented on the committee, and even among them the 
 proposal found little or no favour. Probably this was 
 due to a certain excessive purism which had its legitimate 
 and intelligible source in the desire to withdraw art from 
 all taint or suspicion of commercialism. In any case the 
 decision then taken had practically put the matter off for 
 a whole generation. Perhaps the delay was not without 
 its uses. 
 
 The first step towards carrying the scheme now once 
 more suggested into a6lual working was taken by Mr. 
 Benson, who, since he left Oxford in 1876, had been en- 
 gaged first (like Morris himself) in an archite&'s office, 
 and then in founding and carrying on a business as a de- 
 corative metal-worker and cabinet-maker, and had been 
 throughout that time intimate with Morris on the side of 
 theory and of praftice alike. In concert with two or three 
 others,he succeeded, early in 1886, in effecting the forma- 
 tion of a provisional committee of some five and twenty 
 members. Nearly all of them were also members of the 
 Art Workers' Guild ; and it was the existence of the Art 
 Workers' Guild, Mr. Benson thinks, which made the 
 Arts and Crafts Exhibition Society possible. Of less 
 import, but not without a large result both for good and 
 harm on the new movement, were the various associa- 
 tions which had sprung up in recent years under the 
 names of Home Arts, or Cottage Arts Societies, or 
 Village Industries. These associations had been formed 
 chiefly by the energy or caprice of individuals. Some 
 of them were diredt attempts at following the teaching of 
 Ruskin. Others represented a mixture of charity and 
 patronage, and their only effedt was to multiply the pro- 
 
200 THE LIFE OF [1888 
 
 duftions of amateur incompetency. In a few cases, ac- 
 cording to the view taken by skilled judges, good work 
 had been produced by them, and in a few more, a slow 
 but steady progress towards good work was visible ; but 
 on the whole they were of little value either as produc- 
 tive or as educational agencies. 
 
 The newly-formed association was at first known by 
 the name of the Combined Arts. The name of the Arts 
 and Crafts was the invention, at a somewhat later stage, 
 of Mr. Cobden-Sanderson. He was also in the main re- 
 sponsible for another of the new departures made in the 
 first Arts and Crafts Exhibition, that of publishing the 
 names of the designer and executant as the joint-authors 
 of any given piece of work which was exhibited. 
 
 That such a thing should be thought of at all marked 
 a great advance from the ideas of a generation earlier. 
 The large firms of decorators and furnishers looked on 
 the notion with suspicion or contempt ; and several of 
 them refused point blank to have anything to do with a 
 scheme under which the work of art should have any 
 name attached to it except that of the proprietor and 
 vendor. It was contrary to their practice, and injurious, 
 as they conceived, to their interests, that even their own 
 <c designer," the artist whom they paid to produce pat- 
 terns for their workmen to execute, should be known by 
 name, or have any substantive existence, or separate re- 
 cognition, outside their workshops. As a body of de- 
 signers — for such in the main they were — the members 
 of the Arts and Crafts Exhibition Society were fighting 
 for their own hand in insisting that he should be so 
 recognized. The further dodlrine that the name of the 
 executant workman should, where possible, be given, as 
 well as that of the designer, was no doubt in a measure 
 due to the working of Socialistic, or at all events semi- 
 Socialistic ideas. To Morris, who had thought the whole 
 
jet. 54] WILLIAM MORRIS 201 
 
 matter out for years, and was never the vidtim of 
 phrases, the point seemed a trivial one ; it was not by 
 printing lists of names in a catalogue that the status of 
 the workman could be raised, or the system of capitalistic 
 commerce altered in the slightest degree. As a matter 
 of fa6t, this was essentially a designers' movement : and 
 it was as such that Morris approached it. Any elements 
 of militant Socialism which appeared in it came from 
 other sources ; and some of those who had been his own 
 disciples, up to the measure of their capacity, in Socialist 
 do&rine, were surprised, and a little indignant, at the 
 cool view which Morris took of the u responsible exe- 
 cutants " of his own designs, and the civil contempt with 
 which he treated the rules and regulations framed by his 
 colleagues or pupils. Here, as always whenever it came 
 to be a question of practical production, he understood 
 exactly how to make the best of things as they are, and 
 was no more the slave of new theories than of old con- 
 ventions. 
 
 Towards the movement which thus took shape, the way 
 here, as in so many other instances, had been pointed out 
 by the far-ranging genius of Ruskin long before any steps 
 were, or could be, taken towards its realization. The 
 prophet had, as usual, been long before his age. The 
 whole of the Socialism with which Morris identified him- 
 self so prominently in the eighties had been implicitly 
 contained, and the greater part of it explicitly stated, in 
 the pages of c< Unto This Last" in 1862, when Morris 
 had just begun the work of his life as a manufacturer. 
 And so now, the new movement in art, which has had so 
 powerful an effect in the succeeding decade, took a direc- 
 tion which had been suggested by Ruskin ten years earlier. 
 Writing to Morris on the 3rd of December, 1878, 
 Ruskin, after thanking him for being the only person 
 who went " straight to the accurate point of the crafts- 
 
202 THE LIFE OF [1888 
 
 man's question,' ' added these striking words : " How 
 much good might be done by the establishment of an 
 exhibition, anywhere, in which the Right doing, instead 
 of the Clever doing, of all that men know how to do, 
 should be the test of acceptance! " The times were not 
 then ripe. But now this was one main objedt with which 
 the Arts and Crafts Society was founded, and this was 
 the test which, to the best of its power and will, it at- 
 tempted to apply. 
 
 The projed had taken form in the latter months of 
 1887. Morris, though for it, as for the whole move- 
 ment out of which it sprang, he was so largely the ulti- 
 mate source, had no share in its origination, and was at 
 first, with his strong common sense, inclined to lay stress 
 on the difficulties that stood in the way u One thing 
 will have to be made clear," he wrote on the last day of 
 that year, " i.e., who is to find the money. I can't help 
 thinking on reflection that some money will have to be 
 dropped upon it : for I don't think (again on refledlion) 
 that you will find commercial exhibitors willing to pay 
 rent for space, and the shillings at the door will not, I 
 fear, come to much after the first week or two : the 
 general public don't care one damn about the arts and 
 crafts ; and our customers can come to our shops to look 
 at our kind of goods ; and the other kind of exhibits 
 would be some of Walter Crane's works and one or two 
 of Burne- Jones : those would be the things worth look- 
 ing at: the rest would tend to be of an amateurish nature, 
 I fear. In short, at the risk of being considered a wet 
 blanket, a Job, or Job's comforter, and all that sort of 
 thing, I must say I rather dread the said exhibition : this 
 is of course my private view of the matter, and also of 
 course I wish it success if it comes off." 
 
 A month later he writes again : " I am convinced that 
 the only time of the year available for the exhibition is 
 
jet. 54] WILLIAM MORRIS 203 
 
 from the middle of March to the middle of August. 
 Any other time it would only be visited by the few who 
 are really interested in the subjeCt. Isn't it now too late 
 to get the thing afoot during this period this year ? " 
 
 But the scheme was already fairly afoot : and Morris 
 seems to have under-estimated, not indeed the aCtual pro- 
 gress that had been made in the production of good work 
 rightly done, but the amount of feeling towards such 
 production which was stirring, and the amount of public 
 interest which had been at last, though languidly and 
 tardily, aroused in the difference between good and bad 
 decorative art. When once the decision was taken, he 
 gave the scheme his hearty support : and in this, as in 
 the succeeding exhibitions held, his work attracted a 
 wider and more intelligent interest than could have been 
 counted upon. The leCtures and papers which he con- 
 tributed had also a real stimulative and educative value. 
 Limited as was the number of people interested in the 
 subjedt, they were to be counted by hundreds where 
 those interested in theoretic Socialism could be reckoned 
 on the fingers of one hand. When he resumed educa- 
 tional work in connexion with what was, after all, his 
 own proper subjeCt, on which he spoke with the ease 
 and authority of an absolute master, he may indeed have 
 felt that he was not striking at the root, but must also 
 have recognized that he was not spending his blows on 
 the air. 
 
 The echoes of the Trafalgar Square disturbances died 
 slowly away. Popular attention in England was soon 
 transferred to the aCtion of the Government in Ireland 
 under the Crimes ACt of 1887 : but Morris refused to 
 be so turned off the point. cc As to Blunt and his im- 
 prisonment," he wrote on the 14th of January (Mr. 
 Wilfrid Blunt was a personal friend of his own, for 
 whom he had a great liking), " from what I hear, the 
 
204 THE LIFE OF [1888 
 
 Irish prisons are better than the English. I don't see 
 that we take it quietly specially because it is in Ireland : 
 there are dozens of poor fellows in prison in England 
 over the Trafalgar Square business, some of them for 
 four or six months, for the same offence as Blunt's, and 
 I fear little enough is said about them. However it is 
 a bad business enough, nor do I deny that an English 
 prison is torture, and is meant to be so. Doubtless it is 
 bad that political prisoners like Blunt and the so-called 
 rioters should be treated as criminals ; but then the 
 criminals are not treated as if they were human beings. 
 The whole prison system in its folly, stupidity, and 
 cruelty, is a disgrace to mankind ; and the treatment of 
 political prisoners is only one instance." 
 
 But though there were crowded meetings to welcome 
 the Trafalgar Square prisoners on their release, the ex- 
 citement, so far as not artificially kept up by the tem- 
 porary alliance between Socialists and Irish Home-Rulers 
 in vindication of the right of free speech in both countries, 
 had already dwindled away. " On the whole," Morris 
 writes again in March, u I think things will be pretty 
 quiet till next Odlober or November, when it will begin 
 simmering again. I have been reading Tolstoi's c War 
 and Peace/ which I find I can get through with much 
 approbation but little enjoyment, and yet (to take the 
 horse round to the other side of the cart) with a good 
 deal of satisfaction. There seems to be a consensus of 
 opinion in these Russian novels as to the curious un- 
 decided turn of the intelledual persons there : Hamlet 
 (Shakespeare's I mean, not the genuine Amlo^i) should 
 have been a Russian, not a Dane. This throws some 
 light on the determination and straightforwardness of 
 the revolutionary heroes and heroines there ; as if they 
 said, ' Russians must be always shilly-shally, letting I 
 dare not wait upon I would, must they ? Look here 
 
jet. 55] WILLIAM MORRIS 205 
 
 then, we will throw all that aside and walk straight to 
 death.' 
 
 "I don't think I shall tackle * Anna Karenina'; I 
 want something more of the nature of a stimulant when 
 I read. I am not in a good temper with myself : I 
 cannot shake off the feeling that I might have done 
 much more in these recent matters than I have ; though 
 I really don't know what I could have done : but I fee) 
 beaten and humbled. Yet one ought not to be down in 
 the mouth about matters ; for I certainly never thought 
 that things would have gone on so fast as they have in 
 the last three years; only, again, as opinion spreads, 
 organization does not spread with it." 
 
 <c The Dream of John Ball " was published as a book 
 that month, and was followed two months later by the 
 volume of leftures and addresses entitled <c Signs of 
 Change." This volume once cleared out of the way, 
 his mind reverted with full force to the romance and 
 simplicity of a remoter past. An epoch of swift change, 
 even were it in the nature of progress, was distasteful to 
 his temperament. He was continually seeking refuge 
 from it in dreams of some settled and seeming-change- 
 less order, whether seen as a vision of the future or re- 
 created from a tradition of the past. The old world 
 which he had summoned up in " John Ball " was one 
 that had none of this stability. Its period was that of 
 the breaking up of the mediaeval system, and the be- 
 ginnings of times of change, destru&ion and unsettle- 
 ment. In the new romance which he now began to 
 write, he went back from the close of the Middle Ages 
 to their earliest beginnings, and from a complex artificial 
 society to the simplest of all known to history. This 
 story, <c The House of the Wolfings," was the first of a 
 series of prose romances which he went on writing almost 
 continuously down to the end of his life. 
 
206 THE LIFE OF [1888 
 
 " I am a little dispirited over our movement in all 
 directions," he writes to Mrs. Burne- Jones on the 29th 
 of July. " Perhaps we Leaguers have been somewhat 
 too stiff in our refusal of compromise. I have always 
 felt that it was rather a matter of temperament than of 
 principle ; that some transition period was of course in- 
 evitable, I mean a transition involving State Socialism 
 and pretty stiff at that ; and also, that whatever might 
 be said about the reception of ideal Socialism or Com- 
 munism, towards this State Socialism things are certainly 
 tending, and swiftly too. But then in all the wearisome 
 shilly-shally of parliamentary politics I should be abso- 
 lutely useless : and the immediate end to be gained, the 
 pushing things just a trifle nearer to State Socialism, 
 which when realized seems to me but a dull goal — all 
 this quite sickens me. Also I know that there are a good 
 many other idealists (if I may use that word of myself) 
 who are in the same position, and I don't see why they 
 should not hold together and keep out of the vestry- 
 business, necessary as that may be. Preaching the ideal 
 is surely always necessary. Yet on the other hand I 
 sometimes vex myself by thinking that perhaps I am not 
 doing the most I can merely for the sake of a piece of 
 c preciousness.' 
 
 " I have done another chapter to the tale, rather good 
 I think, and shall get on with it as I can ; and when 
 finished shall set about revising before I get it into 
 type." 
 
 The work of editing the Commonweal, which even 
 in its first hopeful days had been unpleasant, had now 
 in this altered frame of mind grown inexpressibly irk- 
 some. " I have been writing hard all the morning," he 
 says on the nth of August, "but not at what I like; 
 have been simply pitching into Balfour and Salisbury, 
 who will never see my scathing periods and wouldn't 
 
jet. 55] WILLIAM MORRIS 207 
 
 care if they did." The scathing periods, as they may 
 still be found in the file of the Commonweal, make 
 very dull reading now, as they made dull writing then. 
 The only chances of writing what he liked that the 
 scope of the Commonweal gave him he seized with 
 avidity : just at this time he was in the middle of a 
 vivid and detailed account of the Revolt of Ghent in 
 the fourteenth century, including long passages of ad- 
 mirable translation from Froissart, which runs through 
 the issues of seven weeks. 
 
 " I am prepared/' he writes again a few weeks later, 
 4C to see all organized Socialism run into the sand for a 
 while. But we shall have done something even then, as 
 we shall have forced intelligent people to consider the 
 matter ; and then there will come some favourable con- 
 junction of circumstances in due time which will call for 
 our aftive work again. If I am alive then I shall chip 
 in again, and one advantage I shall have, that I shall 
 know much better what to do and what to forbear than 
 this first time." 
 
 In this settled low content he spent not an unhappy 
 autumn, as a series of letters in August and September 
 sufficiently show. But before quoting from these I may 
 be pardoned for inserting a letter of the same autumn, 
 addressed to "the baby of the lot " who had been children 
 together through the past twenty years, Miss Margaret 
 Bur ne- Jones. She was married this year on the 4th of 
 September. 
 
 " Kelmscott House, 
 " August 2 1st, 1888. 
 
 (C Dearest Margery, 
 
 U I have bidden our Mr. Smith to send you an 
 Article' called a Hammersmith Rug (made ?£ Merton 
 Abbey) which Janey and I ask you to take as a small 
 
208 THE LIFE OF [1888 
 
 and unimportant addition to your ' hards/ If it should 
 at any time get dirty (as is likely, since London will not 
 be pulled down for a few months, I judge) if you send 
 it to Merton we can wash it as good as new. 
 
 €€ Also with this little gift take my hearty good wishes 
 for your happiness, which you will easily believe are not 
 at all conventional, since you will remember how prettily 
 and dearly you have always behaved to me since you 
 were a dear little child, in the days when I was really a 
 young man, but thought myself rather old. Also as the 
 wish is not conventional, as really meaning what it says, 
 so it is not conventional as saying something which I do 
 not think will happen : as indeed I think you have every 
 chance of being happy, both because of your fortunate 
 surroundings, and your good choice, and especially be- 
 cause I think you have it in you to be happy, and to be 
 all along the dear little child of those times I was remind- 
 ing you of. 
 
 u I went away in a hurry last Sunday, which I was 
 sorry for, as I should have liked to have said good-bye. 
 But I shall hope to see you very soon after September. 
 
 * f Meantime good-bye, and good luck in all senses of 
 the word. 
 
 " Your affedtionate friend, 
 
 " William Morris." 
 
 The following are extra&s from letters to his daughter 
 Jenny at Malvern. 
 
 August 1 8th. " Well, my dear, as to Worcester I have 
 only been there once, since the days when I sucked at a 
 bottle, of which your Granny will tell you. That once 
 was when I went to see my Aunts thirty years ago, and 
 I was not so well informed on archaeology as I am now. 
 But I do remember Prince Arthurs Chantry and the 
 tombs and also the general look of the Church. The 
 
jet. 55] WILLIAM MORRIS 209 
 
 town I don't remember except as a mass of red brick 
 broken by a few half-timber houses. 
 
 u Yesterday I went to Birmingham all by myself to see 
 the new window : my work was over there in five min- 
 utes, for it was quite satisfactory ; it was rather a long 
 journey for so short a piece of work. Well, I must tell 
 you about the Norwich journey, my dear. We went 
 down rather a jolly company though the day was dull. 
 The comrades work one pretty hard when they get hold 
 of one in Norwich, and I left most of my voice behind 
 me there. I spoke three times on the Sunday, twice in 
 the market-place, once indoors, and twice in the market- 
 place on the Monday, besides taking the chair for Mrs. 
 Besant in the evening indoors ; and being photographed 
 (in groups) twice, and going a row (in five boats, cost 
 1 $d.) in the afternoon. However I enjoyed it all and was 
 pleased that it was so successful : there were between 
 seven and eight thousand people present at the meeting 
 in the market-place on Sunday afternoon; and all the 
 meetings were good. After the Sunday afternoon meet- 
 ing Mrs. Besant proposed a walk, and we went down 
 towards the Close ; but Lord ! such a tail as we took 
 with us, including a lot of boys who were fascinated by 
 us, expedted I think to see us hanged presently ; the 
 others except the boys mostly tailed off when we got into 
 the Close, but not the boys ; the only resource we had 
 was to cross the ferry at the other side of the Close, which 
 charges \d. for the transit ; this threw out our younger 
 brethren and we got away quietly. 
 
 f< The river I went on was a branch of the Wensum ; 
 it was very beautiful ; the water awash with the green 
 banks, willows nearly meeting over the water ; no rushes 
 or reeds, no weeds except some kind of long grass grow- 
 ing up from the bottom, no stream scarcely, and the 
 water deep and clear as glass. All quite different from 
 
 11. p 
 
210 THE LIFE OF [1888 
 
 the rivers I am used to : in fad I always feel in a foreign 
 land when I go to Norwich. " 
 
 August 2 1 st. 4< I suppose your mother told you we 
 are going down to Kelmscott to-day : you see your 
 mother doesn't like it to eat its head off, and for my 
 part I have been rather driven lately and want to be 
 quiet. I am taking down a piece of Oxford Street work 
 which I must do, and I shall hope to get on with my 
 story, perhaps nearly finish it." 
 
 August 28th. " We had a beautiful day on Sunday: 
 we all went up the water along with Mr. Radford, who 
 suddenly turned up on Saturday evening on a bicycle, 
 asking for lodging, having come over from Didcot 
 through Wantage. The morning opened most lovely; 
 we started at eleven, and by twelve were sheltering our- 
 selves from a driving rain under Mr. Birchall's yew 
 tree ; then it cleared a little, and we got to dinner close 
 to where we dined so merrily, my dear, with Ellis, and 
 lo by two the sun was hot and bright, and the day 
 straight on most lovely. We got out at the Round 
 House, and walked nearly a mile up the canal, which 
 is really very pretty, the water without stream and clear 
 and bright : it made me long for an expedition. Your 
 mother and Crom and I went up to the Church after- 
 wards over perilous ditch-bridges, leaving Radford and 
 May lazing by the boat. It went to my heart on that 
 beautiful afternoon to see the negleft and stupidity that 
 had so marred the lovely little building : yet it still 
 looked lovely. As we passed by Buscot, there were the 
 Birchalls in their goat-mead, and we exchanged a few 
 words with them, as we rather expeded Walker to meet 
 us : we had left the house quite empty of Frank and 
 everybody, the key under the doormat and a letter 
 pinned to the door for Walker, who duly came and 
 walked on to meet us and fell in with us just as we were 
 
jet. 55] WILLIAM MORRIS 211 
 
 opening Buscot Lock. So we had a merry evening 
 together, and I so wished you had been with us, my 
 darling." 
 
 September 6th. cc Yesterday the weather, which had 
 been drizzly in the morning, clearing up somewhat in 
 the afternoon, we set off about 2.30 to go to Rushey, 
 thinking we might get to Bampton, which your mother 
 has never seen, and we got down there comfortably 
 enough : we intended coming straight back by boat, as 
 we seemed too late to get up to Bampton and back, (it 
 is two miles from the lock there,) but strolling up 
 towards the town over the fields we thought we would 
 go there and get a trap for the ladies, and that Walker 
 and I would go back and pull the boat home : so we did 
 this; but Mrs. Walker could only go so slow that it 
 was quite late before we got to Bampton. However 
 we managed to see the church, which is a very fine one, 
 but has been shockingly restored. There is Norman 
 work in it, and transition ; and a fine decorated nave 
 with a most beautiful western doorway. The tower and 
 spire is very pretty ; much the same date as Broad well 
 but handsomer. Near the church is a very pretty little 
 house used as a grammar school, and another house called 
 the Deanery. The town is the queerest left-behind sort 
 of a place : when Walker and I first came into the street 
 there were two other persons visible, a small boy and a 
 small girl. Well, it was nearly dark when W. and I 
 set off to walk to Rushey, and quite dark before we 
 were well under way. I had to steer all the way, as 
 Walker didn't like the job. It was a very dark night 
 with drizzle now and then, and often one could barely 
 see the bank. However we scarcely touched the bank 
 at all, and got in about 10 o'clock. Frank had been 
 sent out with a lantern to meet us, and we perceived the 
 same as we came to Welly-Hole Reach, looking like a 
 
212 THE LIFE OF [1888 
 
 c bright particular star/ It seems he had been nearly 
 down to the Old Weir to look for us." 
 
 The autumn holiday lingered late. On the 8th of 
 Oftober he wrote to Ellis, who had been staying with 
 him at Kelmscott : 
 
 " I am really surprised at your not liking ( Tom 
 Sawyer/ especially as it so very like Shakespeare, not to 
 say Shelley. 
 
 " I went out in the afternoon of Saturday, and a most 
 grim and stormy afternoon it was : I caught nothing 
 except that just as I was going away a J lb. chub 
 took my gudgeon and insisted on being caught. Satur- 
 day night was as cold as need be ; but yesterday was 
 better, and to-day is a mild beautiful morning : un- 
 happily there is no river for me to-day, as we are all 
 going to Fairford. 
 
 " I wish you had been here instead of the new comer, 
 whose shortcomings I am not used to like I am to yours 
 and mine ; so that we have no standing cause of quarrel ; 
 which I think is a necessity to a really good under- 
 standing." 
 
 At the end of Oftober, when " the river has grown 
 small and bright and the fish won't bite," he regretfully 
 left Kelmscott. On the 1st of November he lectured on 
 Tapestry-weaving at the first Exhibition of the Arts and 
 Crafts Society, to the catalogue of which he had already 
 contributed a short paper on Textiles. Three Arras 
 tapestries from the Merton Abbey looms were among the 
 objeds exhibited. The great series of tapestries from the 
 Morte d' Arthur now hung at Stanmore Hall were then 
 being put in hand. cc The House of the Wolfings," too, 
 had been finished during the autumn, and was through 
 the press early in December. 
 
 Apart from other reasons this book has a special interest 
 as marking the beginning of Morris's practical dealings 
 
jet. 55] WILLIAM MORRIS 213 
 
 with the art of typography. Hitherto he had been con- 
 tent to let his books be printed in the common way, with- 
 out any special attention to matters of type or arrangement 
 of page. His attention had been lately turned to the 
 matter through an increasing intimacy with his neighbour 
 at Hammersmith, Mr. Emery Walker, whose enthusiasm 
 for fine printing was accompanied by a thorough practical 
 acquaintance with it as a modern handicraft. The early 
 printed books, which Morris had hitherto collected and 
 prized mainly for their woodcuts, now took a fresh 
 interest and value to him as specimens of beauty in type. 
 In consultation with Mr. Walker he fixed on a fount of 
 type belonging to Messrs. Whittingham for the new book. 
 It had been cast as an experiment about half a century 
 before, and was modelled on an old Basel fount ; and it 
 had already been used in some of the trial pages of the 
 illustrated " Earthly Paradise " which had been set up 
 in 1868. " It will be a pretty piece of typography for 
 modern times," Morris said of the book before it ap- 
 peared ; and so pleased was he with it, that he could not 
 bear for a while to hear any adverse criticism even on the 
 demerits of the type, especially on an over-conspicuous 
 e of the lower case which he silently altered in his next 
 book, cc The Roots of the Mountains. " 
 
 The story itself well deserved the words " your de- 
 lightful and wonderful book," with which it was hailed 
 by Mr. Swinburne. For the first time since " The Earthly 
 Paradise " had been completed, Morris was writing with 
 complete enjoyment and perfed ease. The life of the 
 Germanic tribes of Central Europe in the second or third 
 century was one which was at once sufficiently known to 
 allow of copious and detailed description and sufficiently 
 undetermined to give full scope to a romantic imagination. 
 The use, as the vehicle of the story, of a mixed mode of 
 prose and verse, was a device not perhaps suited for fre- 
 
2i 4 THE LIFE OF [1889 
 
 quent repetition, but excellently adapted for this particular 
 purpose. It was suggested by the Icelandic Sagas, but 
 used in a fresh and quite delightful way. By the use of 
 prose for the main narrative, he avoided the languor 
 which is almost inseparable from verse as a medium of 
 continuous narration ; and in speeches and ornate passages, 
 where prose in its turn would flag, the rolling verse — 
 that of " Sigurd the Volsung " revived in much of its first 
 freshness — seems the natural medium of the heightened 
 emotion. 
 
 Like " The Roots of the Mountains," it belongs to 
 what may be called the epic or Icelandic side of the 
 author's imagination. In the later prose tales he reverted 
 to a softer and sweeter world, that of a vaguely mediaeval 
 life, with churches in it and houses of monks, and a faint 
 air of the thirteenth century, the world of his own earlier 
 masterpiece in the story of <c The Man Born to be King." 
 This primitive Gothic world of older gods and more heroic 
 men was less fully his own. In " The Roots of the 
 Mountains," though the supposed date of the story can 
 hardly be later than the seventh century, he tends to slip 
 back now and then into the later romantic world, full of 
 beautifully forged armour and grey carved stone, and 
 gardens standing thick with pinks and lavender. But 
 here all the sensuous ornament of mediaeval romance is 
 as stridlly excluded as it is from the stories of Sigurd and 
 of the dwellers in Laxdale. Even when the hero makes 
 pictures for himself of some golden life that is to be when 
 fighting is over, it is no such world of cloistered green 
 places, cc faint with the scent of the overworn roses and 
 the honey-sweetness of the lilies," to which his dreams 
 turn, but the hard open life of the earlier world. <c There 
 he was between the plough-stilts in the acres of the kindred 
 when the west wind was blowing over the promise of 
 early spring ; or smiting down the ripe wheat in the hot 
 
mt. 55] WILLIAM MORRIS 215 
 
 afternoon amidst the laughter and merry talk of man and 
 maid ; or far away over Mirkwood-water watching the 
 edges of the wood against the prowling wolf and lynx, 
 the stars just beginning to shine over his head ; or wend- 
 ing the windless woods in the first frosts before the snow 
 came, the hunter's bow or javelin in hand ; or coming 
 back from the wood with the quarry on the sledge across 
 the snow, when winter was deep, through the biting icy 
 wind and the whirl of the drifting snow, to the lights and 
 music of the Great Roof, and the merry talk therein and 
 the smiling of the faces glad to see the hunting-carles 
 come back ; and the full draughts of mead, and the sweet 
 rest a night-tide when the north wind was moaning round 
 the ancient home." 
 
 His first satisfaction in the appearance of the book 
 was soon replaced by a keener desire to improve upon it. 
 "I am very glad that you like the new book," he 
 writes to Ellis a few days after it was published. " I 
 quite agree with you about the type ; they have managed 
 to knock the guts out of it somehow. Also I am be- 
 ginning to learn something about the art of type-setting; 
 and I now see what a lot of difference there is between 
 the work of the conceited numskulls of to-day and 
 that of the 15th and 16th century printers merely in 
 the arrangement of the words, I mean the spacing out : 
 it makes all the difference in the beauty of a page of 
 print. If ever I print another book I shall enter into 
 the conflid on this side also. However this is all grief 
 that comes of fresh knowledge and I am pretty well 
 pleased with the book as to its personal appearance." 
 
 On the 10th of January he writes to his daughter: 
 
 " Dearest own Jenny, 
 
 " I came back yesterday from Hadham ; Auntie 
 was pretty well, and the Granny in very good spirits 
 
216 THE LIFE OF [1889 
 
 but very deaf. She went a walk with me to the Church 
 in the morning : they are c restoring' the nave; a wan- 
 ton piece of stupidity, as there was really nothing to do 
 with it. However there was no excuse for touching the 
 roof, which is quite sound; so they left that alone: in 
 short the only harm is the new plaister, and the new 
 modern glass, but that is considerable. They have found 
 one or two bits of painting, which they have left : one a 
 good patch of that imitation of patterned stuff such as 
 we know at Fairford and Burford, but not so elaborate ; 
 a rough bold good pattern. I went to see the Berrys 
 with them ; and thought the house very nice ; it is 
 really a 16th century building much faked up : but the 
 rooms with that pleasantness of an old house : some of 
 them with that regular old panelling in them where the 
 mouldings are not c mitred/ but the horizontal ones die 
 off before they meet the vertical. I was there two nights 
 and played backgammon both with Auntie and Granny : 
 the latter beat me one night (to her great delight), but 
 they, and especially Auntie, played with the utmost 
 recklessness. 
 
 cc This is a bad business of the burning of Clouds, 
 isn't it ? When I saw it (the year before last I think) 
 it looked so solid that one could not think of its being 
 destroyed. I was at the Grange this morning and Aunt 
 Georgie read me a letter to Margaret from one of the 
 daughters which gave a really good account of the scene. 
 It was touch and go for some of them. I saw Webb 
 yesterday, and he made light of it, as he would be likely 
 to do. It seems it will be rebuilt, which is a good 
 thing ; but there is a certain feeling of weariness in the 
 proceeding, isn't there, dear ? Webb says that some of 
 the walls may be all right, especially as they are mostly 
 built of sandstone, not limestone : the lower rooms, or 
 some of them, were not burnt. The walls were 3 feet 
 
jet. 55] WILLIAM MORRIS 
 
 217 
 
 thick. One of Uncle Ned's cartoons that he did for the 
 church in Rome was there and was burnt ; but that is 
 the only important unreplaceable thing I have heard of. 
 Ouv long carpet was, I imagine, saved. 
 
 " The weather changed on Tuesday and yesterday, 
 which was a bright beautiful day : but to-day is cold ; 
 rainy, sleety, but not frosty. I think I should care 
 mighty little about it (in January) if I were at Kelmscott, 
 but bad weather, especially fog, does make London 
 wretched : indeed I feel very like not going out in it 
 this evening ; but I think I must, as it is a Ways and 
 Means evening at the League. 
 
 cc Well, darling Jenny, good-bye with this not very 
 brilliant letter. By the way you will be glad to hear 
 that Faulkner shows signs of mending. Good-bye, my 
 dearest child. 
 
 <c Your loving father, 
 
 " William Morris." 
 
 Charles Faulkner, the constant friend ot so many 
 years, had been struck down by paralysis in the previous 
 Oftober. He lingered in a state of living death for up- 
 wards of three years, with just so much intelligence left 
 as allowed of his being amused a little by the company 
 of his friends. Through all that period, his sister, Miss 
 Kate Faulkner, was his devoted and unweariable nurse; 
 and next to her, his old companions, Webb and Morris, 
 were the most constant in their attention. Between 
 Morris and Faulkner the intimacy and affe&ion was 
 perhaps the stronger that it was founded on a deeper 
 and subtler bond than community of tastes or even asso- 
 ciation in work. A fine mathematician and a man of 
 high proficiency in the mixed mathematics of engineer- 
 ing, Faulkner had no native bent towards art, and no 
 apparent creative power. He had, however, qualities 
 
2-18 THE LIFE OF [1889 
 
 at least as attaching : unconquerable courage, transpar- 
 ent honesty, and deep-rooted affeftion ; and his devotion 
 to Morris knew no limit. He had followed him into the 
 Socialist League as he had followed him into the firm of 
 Red Lion Square, and lectured on Socialism for him as 
 he had painted tiles and cut wood-blocks five and twenty- 
 years earlier, with perfed: simplicity and sincerity. The 
 work and all the load of toil and obloquy it involved 
 had almost been too much even for Morris's immense 
 energy and abounding vitality: on the weaker constitution 
 of Faulkner it would seem to have afted with dangerous 
 and finally fatal result. 
 
 " The Roots of the Mountains " had been begun as 
 soon as " The House of the Wolfings " was through the 
 press. "Did I tell you in my last," he writes to his 
 daughter on the 29th of January, c< that I had begun a 
 new tale ? I don't know whether it will come to any- 
 thing, but I have written about twenty pages in the 
 rough. This time I don't think I shall 'drop into 
 poetry,' at least not systematically. For one thing the 
 condition of the people I am telling of is later (whatever 
 their date may be) than that of the Wolfings. They 
 are people living in a place near the Great Mountains. 
 I don't think it is worth while telling you anything more 
 of it till you hear some of it done, as the telling the plot 
 of a story in cold blood falls very flat." 
 
 Though he still leftured regularly for the Socialist 
 League, addresses on Art, principally given to the 
 students of Art Schools, were taking a more and more 
 prominent place in his activity. The way in which the 
 two kinds of work were at present combined is well 
 illustrated by a letter of this February. " I go to-morrow, 
 Saturday," he writes from Hammersmith, fC by night 
 train to Glasgow, and lefture for the branch on Sunday 
 evening. On the Monday I le&ure to certain art students 
 
jet. WILLIAM MORRIS 219 
 
 on Gothic Architecture, which I daresay will be rather a 
 new subjed: to them, and will a good deal surprise them. 
 On the Tuesday I give an address at the School of Art 
 on Arts and Crafts. On Wednesday I go to Edinburgh 
 and lecfhire for the branch there : on Thursday I go to 
 Macclesfield and lecture (Arts and Crafts) to the School 
 of Art there : Friday I come home, with pretty well 
 enough of it." 
 
 On this visit to Glasgow, tf I went," he says, " to Pro- 
 fessor Nichol to guest : he is a c literary man/ not with 
 a wooden leg ; but there is something crippled about his 
 mind all the same ; a very clever and able man, but soured 
 and disappointed ; mainly I think because his capacity is 
 second- and his ambition first-rate. He is talkative and 
 amusing, and was very cordial with me. That day I 
 lectured on Gothic Architecture to an Institute of students. 
 I am afraid that they did not know much about the sub- 
 ject, so that my matter was rather over their heads. Lec- 
 ture over, I underwent a bore — to wit dining at a solemn 
 dinner at the Arts Club : Lord Provost (i.e.. Mayor) 
 present, also professors and big-wigs. The business of 
 the evening to make speeches; toasts and thanks for 
 them, /had to return thanks for Music and Literature, 
 curious conjuncture ! which I turned the flank of by allud- 
 ing to the Scotch Ballads and their old tunes. Tuesday 
 I had to address the art-school after a sort of private 
 public dinner ; the place was full, although J. Chamber- 
 lain was speaking to a big meeting elsewhere, and the 
 folk seemed pleased." 
 
 Through all the wear and tear of this work "The Roots 
 of the Mountains'' was making steady progress. At 
 Kelmscott in March, " the rooks and the lambs both 
 singing around me," he writes that " I have been writing 
 out my rough copy of my story and have done a good 
 deal of it. I am half inclined not to kill my Bride, but 
 
220 THE LIFE OF [1889 
 
 to make her marry the brother : it would be a very good 
 alliance for the Burgdalers and the Silverdalers both, and 
 I don't think sentiment ought to stand in the way." 
 
 On Easter Monday he writes again from Kelmscott 
 to Mrs. Burne- Jones : 
 
 cc As I have been away some time I will hereby bestow 
 some of my tediousness on you. I only got here on 
 Thursday and feel as if I had been staying here a long 
 time ; not that I have been bored with it, as I have enough 
 to do what with my story, what with other work which 
 I ought to do and don't. The country is about six 
 weeks backward ; more backward by a good deal than it 
 was last year, though that was late : neither the big trees 
 (except the chestnuts) nor the apple trees show any sign 
 of life yet. The garden is very pretty, though there are 
 scarce any flowers in blossom except the primroses ; but 
 there are such beautiful promises of buds and things just 
 out of the ground that it makes amends for all. The 
 buds of the wild tulip, which is one of the beautifullest 
 flowers there is, just at point to open. Jenny and I went 
 up into Buscot wood this morning : it is such a change 
 from our river plain that it is like going into another 
 country ; yet I don't much care about a wood unless it 
 is a very big one ; and Buscot is scarcely more than a 
 coppice ; but the blue distance between the trunks was 
 very delightful. As to the weather, bearing in mind that 
 things are so much behindhand, it is not bad. To-day 
 has been March all over ; rain-showers, hail, wind, dead 
 calm, thunder, finishing with a calm frosty evening sky. 
 The birds are amusing, especially the starlings, whereof 
 there are many: but some damned fool has been bullying 
 our rooks so much that they have only got six nests, so 
 that we haven't got the proper volume of sound from 
 them. 
 
 " One grief, the sort of thing that is always happening 
 
jet. 56] WILLIAM MORRIS 221 
 
 in the spring : there were some beautiful willows at Eaton 
 Hastings which to my certain knowledge had not been 
 polled during the whole 1 7 years that we have been here ; 
 and now the idiot Parson has polled them into wretched 
 stumps. I should like to cut off the beggar's legs and 
 have wooden ones made for him out of the willow timber, 
 the value of which is about ys. 6d. 
 
 <c I am so very sorry to hear of poor Kate's misfortune, 
 and am not a little uneasy about it. I didn't see her 
 last Wednesday, though I called. She was poorly then, 
 having had some bad nights with poor dear Charley. It 
 is such a grievous business altogether that, rightly or 
 wrongly, I try not to think of it too much lest I should 
 give way altogether, and make an end of what small use 
 there may be in my life." 
 
 The following beautiful description of a visit to west- 
 ern Wiltshire on business of the Society for Protection 
 of Ancient Buildings is also from a letter to Mrs. Burne- 
 Jones written on the 13th of May : 
 
 cc Thursday afternoon was grey and stormy : the light- 
 ning twinkled over the White Horse as we passed by, 
 and just at Swindon down came the rain in floods. How- 
 ever I had rather a pleasant journey to Westbury, as the 
 rain didn't last long, and every field corner was lovely. 
 Some way off I saw the downs rise mountainous above 
 the town, and remembered them by token of a modern 
 White Horse which somewhat spoils the lovely headland 
 they push into the plain. The town is little and, as I 
 expected, dull, dull, dull : no old houses, a great big 
 church much spoiled by restoration, and my dull, but not 
 ugly inn close to it. I got in about seven, so had a long- 
 ish time before bed, which I partly got rid of by going a 
 little way up the down after my dinner : so you see gout 
 was not rampant. The resources of the Lopes Arms 
 were not great ; but they (with all civility) provided me 
 
222 THE LIFE OF [1889 
 
 for breakfast with what to me has been of late a rarity ; 
 to wit, a genuine addled egg. However their hearts were 
 in the right places if their eggs were not. Next morning 
 I drove to Edington along the feet of the Downs, which 
 are very fine : also the villages push up right into their 
 buttresses with cottages and trees, so that it is lovely; 
 the building being tolerable: so came I to Edington, 
 which was like one of my dream-churches, so big and 
 splendid : the whole population of Edington and its two 
 neighbours could easily go to church in one of its tran- 
 septs. Beside it a beautiful little fifteenth-century house 
 with pretty garden, and beyond, the Abbey gardens and 
 fish-ponds and a village green on the other side : except 
 that the parson is a lubber-fiend and that the people are 
 as poor as may be, nothing need be better. So back to 
 Westbury, and in early afternoon to Bradford. Quite a 
 pretty town and as gay as gay ; away from the downs 
 in a steep little valley built all up the southern-looking 
 slope ; all up and down with steps and queer nooks : of 
 stone every house, most of them old, a good many medi- 
 aeval. The bridge fifteenth century, with a queer little 
 toll-house on it. The church a very big and fine one, 
 but scraped to death by G. Scott, the (happily) dead dog. 
 Close by, the Saxon chapel, a very beautiful little build- 
 ing, but shamefully vulgarized by restoration, cast iron 
 railings, and sixpence a head. Out in the meadow, 
 awkwardly near the Railway Station, Barton Farm with 
 old house and farm buildings, the big fourteenth-century 
 barn one of them. It is very fine, but I think Great 
 Coxwell is bigger, and I like it better." 
 
 At Kelmscott again on Midsummer day <c haymaking 
 is going on like a house afire; I should think such a hay- 
 time has seldom been; heavy crop and wonderful weather 
 to get it in. For the rest the country is one big nose- 
 gay, the scents wonderful, really that is the word ; the 
 
THE MANOR HOUSE, KELMSCOTT, FROM THE GARDEN. 
 
mt. 56] WILLIAM MORRIS 223 
 
 life to us holiday-makers luxurious to the extent of 
 making one feel wicked, at least in the old sense of be- 
 witched. 
 
 " We went to Great Coxwell yesterday, and also to 
 Little Coxwell, where there is a funny little church with 
 a 14th-century wooden roof over the nave, the church 
 much smaller than Kelmscott. We were delighted with 
 the barn again. The farmer turned up and seemed a 
 nice sort of chap ; he said his family had been there for 
 hundreds of years. William Morris was, it seems, lord 
 of the manor there : we saw his brass again, it is really 
 a very pretty one. The harvest being now out of the 
 barn, we saw the corbels that support the wall pieces : 
 they are certainly not later than 1250, so the barn is 
 much earlier than I thought. The building of the walls 
 and buttresses is remarkably good and solid. 
 
 " The roses are not at their best, yet I shall bring 
 you a good bunch. The pink martagon lilies have been 
 very fine. Raspberries any amount, but none to eat for 
 a fortnight at least: no strawberries yet." 
 
 In July Morris was one of the English delegates to 
 an international Congress of Socialists held in Paris to 
 celebrate the hundredth anniversary of the fall of the 
 Bastille. The proceedings there did not re-inspire him 
 with confidence in the prospedls of the cause or the 
 wisdom of its leaders. He left Paris before the sittings 
 of the Congress were concluded, and so escaped the final 
 scenes of confused recrimination among the various sefts 
 which ended in the violent expulsion of the dissentient 
 minority. The great London dock strike of the follow- 
 ing August and September was hailed by him with a 
 greater hope : for here at least there was an instance of 
 labour organizing itself for a definite end, and being 
 supported in the struggle by a powerful minority, if not 
 an adlual preponderance, of educated opinion. The end 
 
224 THE LIFE OF [1889 
 
 in question was indeed a particular one, yet it involved 
 issues of immense width. Almost for the first time in 
 the social history of England the organized trades took 
 their part definitely on the side of unskilled and un- 
 organized labour, and the principle of a minimum pay- 
 ment for human work began to emerge. The "docker's 
 tanner "of 1889 was the germ more fully developed in 
 the famous cc living wage " of 1893. 
 
 Morris was at Kelmscott when the strike began ; but 
 on returning to London he at once realized its import- 
 ance. <c I went straight to the League," he writes on 
 the 31st of August, " and found our people there in a 
 great state of excitement about the strike, the import- 
 ance of which I had not at all understood in the country: 
 only you see we are two days late for news at Kelms- 
 cott. However I thought that perhaps our folk a little 
 exaggerated the importance of it, as to some of them it 
 seemed that now at last the revolution was beginning. 
 Whereas indeed it began before the Mammoth ended, 
 and is now only going on. Yet I don't want to belittle 
 the strike, which is of much importance, chiefly as show- 
 ing such a good spirit on the part of the men. They 
 will, I fear, be beaten ; and perhaps their yesterday's 
 manifesto will not do them good as mere strikers. On 
 the other hand it was a step which they were sure to 
 take, if the masters held out ; as in spite of the asser- 
 tions of the daily press the tendency has been Socialistic ; 
 and I am very glad that they have taken it, since as 
 aforesaid the real point of the strike is the sense of com- 
 bination which it is giving to the men, and their winning 
 or losing matters little, especially as what they ask for 
 is so small. That the capitalistic press should turn 
 against them for the said manifesto, is a matter of course, 
 so after this hint at a general strike (it can be no more 
 than a hint) it is clear that there is a feeling abroad 
 
mt. 56] WILLIAM MORRIS 225 
 
 wider than a mere attack on these muddling dock di- 
 rectors. I am told, and believe it, that the attack is on 
 sweating in general. Our people have been very active; 
 the Hammersmith branch alone having collected (mostly 
 on Sunday and Monday last) nearly £20 ; a large sum 
 for Socialists to handle." 
 
 fC I went on Wednesday to Yarmouth," says a letter of 
 the same date, " and had many thoughts of Peggotty. 
 It really is a jolly old ramshackle place : the country 
 about curious and fascinating : sand banks very low, all 
 covered with heather and ling and bracken, so that if 
 you were lying there you would expect to see highland 
 crags above you ; instead of which, two feet below 
 spread out miles upon miles of alluvial meadows with 
 slow rivers running through them, as you judge by the 
 great sails moving over the pastures. The great church 
 has been woefully restored, indeed almost ruined outside ; 
 I believe by John Seddon : but inside there is a good 
 deal to see : a huge spacious church without any clere- 
 story anywhere ; exhilarating to behold after the modern 
 shabbiness." 
 
 The Arts and Crafts Exhibition Society held a second 
 exhibition at the New Gallery in autumn, of which a 
 selection of Morris's woven stuffs and printed cottons was 
 a prominent feature. To the catalogue he contributed a 
 charming and luminous essay on the art of dyeing; and 
 he opened the series of lectures given in the rooms of 
 the exhibition by an introductory address on Gothic 
 Architecture, which expressed within brief compass and 
 in simple words the whole knowledge and enthusiasm of 
 a lifetime. 
 
 He was also one of the leading speakers at an Art Con- 
 gress held in Edinburgh in November, which was only 
 conspicuous for a curious attempt, made by a section of 
 its promoters, to capture it for Socialism after having 
 
 11. Q 
 
226 THE LIFE OF [1889 
 
 sacrificed to decorum by meeting under the presidency 
 of the Marquis of Lome. Before he went, Morris frankly 
 called his journey a fool's errand. When it was finished 
 he wrote home: "It was rather a dull job, and imagine 
 one in the chair hour after hour listening to men teach- 
 ing their grandmother to suck eggs, and I on my good be- 
 haviour too ! I am very tired of it ; but since the Tory 
 evening paper here declares that Crane and I have spoiled 
 the Congress, you may imagine we have not let all go by 
 default. In point of fad:, with the exception of Rich- 
 mond, who gave a good address yesterday, there was no- 
 thing of any interest said except by Crane and me ; and 
 my le<5ture on dyeing to the workmen was really a success." 
 This lefture was one of a series given to working men 
 by experts on the principles and practice of their crafts. 
 The others were given by Mr. Crane, Mr. Emery Walker, 
 and Mr. Cobden-Sanderson, all of them either declared 
 Socialists or in full sympathy with Socialism. f< On the 
 whole the working men were good and attentive," Morris 
 says, " and stood our Socialism well, in fa6t seemed to 
 relish it." 
 
 iC I have finished my book (last night)," he writes to 
 Kelmscott on the 10th of Odtober, "and there will not 
 be many more proofs I think. I have a mind to begin 
 a short story again soon; but shall say no more about it 
 till it is under way. I have been to Oxford Street and 
 Merton, and find business good: the girls were hard at 
 work on the yellow carpet, but had not done very much 
 to it yet. I was busy at pointing all the day. The 
 tapestry is going on well, though not very fast. We 
 have sold the c Peace ' exhibited at the Arts and Crafts 
 f° r ;£i6o, which I am glad of. As for the Exhibition, 
 I think it will be a success : the rooms look very pretty ; 
 and there are a good many interesting works there. The 
 visitors come pretty well : these first three days they have 
 
mt. 56] WILLIAM MORRIS 227 
 
 taken more than double than they did in the same time 
 last year ; so this looks good." 
 
 " The Roots of the Mountains " was published in the 
 middle of November. The study of typography as a 
 fine art, which hadbeen begun in cc The House of the Wolf- 
 ings," was here carried out much more fully, and the result 
 was a page of great beauty. " I am so pleased with my 
 book," Morris said soon after it was published, cc — typo- 
 graphy, binding, and must I say it, literary matter — that 
 I am any day to be seen huggling it up, and am become 
 a spe&acle to Gods and men because of it." As to the 
 " literary matter," he said afterwards that this of all hi? 
 books was the one which had given him the greatest 
 pleasure in writing. For combination and balance of his 
 qualities it may perhaps be ranked first among his prose 
 romances. It has not the strength of its predecessor, 
 " The House of the Wolfings," nor the fairy charm of its 
 successor, "The Wood beyond the World." But in its 
 union of the gravity of the Saga with the delicate and 
 profuse ornament of the romance it may perhaps take the 
 first place among the three as a work of art. 
 
 The binding which pleased him so much was one of 
 his own chintzes, used for a small number of copies of 
 the book printed on hand-made paper. His own cooler 
 judgment recognized that it had defefts for this use both 
 in pattern and texture, and the experiment was not re- 
 peated. But his interest in the produ&ion of printed 
 books was now fully aroused on all its sides ; and he 
 was already beginning to plan out the printing and pro- 
 duction of such books himself. 
 
 cc I think before my next book comes out," he wrote 
 to Ellis on the 21st of November, " I shall design a 
 chintz for bookbinding, and if I do I shall get it cal- 
 endered so as to keep the dirt off — what do you think ? 
 As to the printing, the difficulty of getting it really well 
 
228 THE LIFE OF [1889 
 
 done shows us the old story again. It seems it is no 
 easy matter to get good hand-press men, so little work 
 is done by the hand-press : that accounts for some defeats 
 in the book, caused by want of care in distributing the 
 ink. I really am thinking of turning printer myself in a 
 small way ; the first step to that would be getting a new 
 fount cut. Walker and I both think Jenson's the best 
 model, taking all things into consideration. What do you 
 think again ? Did you ever have his Pliny ? I have a 
 vivid recolle&ion of the vellum copy at the Bodleian." 
 
 Such was the first inception of the Kelmscott Press. 
 In December Mr. Emery Walker was asked by Morris 
 to go into partnership with him as a printer. He was 
 unable to accept the offer ; but the starting of a printing 
 press was nevertheless definitely resolved on, and the latest 
 great interest of Morris's life begins from this point. 
 
 The last letter of the year is as follows : 
 
 €€ Kelmscott House, 
 
 "Dec. 24th, 1889. 
 
 " Dearest Mother, 
 
 <c Thank you very much for your kind letter, 
 and for sending me the paper knife. We are all well; 
 and as for me I rather like the weather for winter- weather. 
 Yesterday morning was indeed beautiful, and Jenny 
 went with a friend to the Chiswick Horticultural Gar- 
 dens, which are still in existence though sadly built up. 
 I remember as clearly as if it were yesterday going with 
 father there when I was quite a little boy, and have never 
 been inside the place since. How the neighbourhood 
 must have altered since then ! Indeed it has altered very 
 much, and that for the worse, since we first came to 
 Turnham Green. 
 
 cc I have been so very busy lately with the work at 
 Oxford Street and Merton, that I have had no time to turn 
 
mt. 56] WILLIAM MORRIS 229 
 
 round, or I should have come down and seen you. I will 
 do so shortly after Christmas. Janey and I remembered 
 that you liked that champagne which I sent you last year, 
 and I'm sure it will do you good to drink a glass now 
 and then ; so we are sending you a little more, which 
 ought to reach you before the New Year. I hope you 
 will like it, dearest Mother. 
 
 " I shall be writing to Henrietta as well as you, but give 
 her my best love, which I send her, and to you, my dearest 
 mother, my best of love and good wishes. 
 
 " The paper knife has not come yet or I would tell 
 you what I think of it. 
 
 M Good-bye, dearest Mother. 
 
 " Your most affedtionate son, 
 
 cc William Morris." 
 
CHAPTER XIX 
 
 passive socialism: foundation of the kelmscott 
 
 PRESS 
 
 1890-1891 
 
 While Morris's attention was becoming absorbed in 
 other fields, the affairs of the Socialist League had been 
 going on from bad to worse. Such part of their do&rines 
 as was of essential truth or immediate practical value had 
 been absorbed by, and was bearing fruit among, the larger 
 body of persons who were interested in social theories, but 
 more concerned about what was immediately possible than 
 in dreams, however high or however bloodthirsty. The 
 real battle-ground had been transferred to the Independent 
 Labour Party, and, in the metropolis, the recently created 
 London County Council. To these bodies a number of 
 the best members of the League now transferred their 
 energies. The remnant became more and more a group 
 of impracticable visionaries whom the movement of things 
 had left behind. In 1889 the control of the executive 
 was captured by a group of professed Anarchists. One 
 of their first a6ts was to depose Morris from the control 
 of the Commonweal, replacing him by an extremist named 
 Frank Kitz. cc The League," says one of its members, 
 " became a romping ground of more than dubious char- 
 acters" — he gives names which I forbear to quote — 
 cc who, being suspedted of relations with the police, drove 
 the better elements away in disgust, and finally broke up 
 what was left of Morris's organization." With infinite 
 
jet. 57] THE LIFE OF WILLIAM MORRIS 231 
 
 patience, Morris continued for some time yet to bear the 
 demands made on his purse to meet the expenses of the 
 Commonweal ; and it was after his removal from the 
 editorship that he contributed to it, from the nth of 
 January to the 4th of Odtober, 1890, the successive 
 chapters of his romance, a News from Nowhere/' In 
 the issues of July and August there was also printed in 
 numbers a le&ure by him on the Development of 
 Modern Society. On the 1 2th of May he reappeared 
 on the stage in support of the fast sinking funds of the 
 journal, taking a part in a one-adl play, " The Duchess 
 of Bayswater and Co.," which was performed by members 
 of the League in a hall in Tottenham Court Road. This 
 was one of the last desperate efforts made to restore the 
 League to solvency. Though the Commonweal never 
 followed the example of a sister journal conducted by 
 Communists and Anarchists at Buenos Ayres, for which 
 any payment was purely voluntary, the number of copies 
 sold was dwindling away almost to nothing, and the 
 appeals repeated in nearly every number for renewal of 
 lapsed subscriptions had little effedt. As the task of 
 keeping the League together became more impracticable, 
 the interest taken in it by Morris, as a thoroughly prac- 
 tical man of business notwithstanding all his high idealism, 
 also fell away. In July he writes, u I have been some- 
 what worrited by matters connected with the League, and 
 am like to be more worrited ; but somehow or other I 
 don't seem to care much." Vague efforts were made from 
 time to time to promote union with other Socialist bodies, 
 but they were futile. The disintegrating forces were too 
 strong to be stopped. The dodlrine of freedom from 
 dictation was worked out in the quaintest ways. At a 
 Revolutionary Conference held in August "it was 
 unanimously agreed " — so the official record runs — u to 
 dispense with any such quasi-constitutional official as a 
 
232 THE LIFE OF [1890 
 
 chairman, and all red-tapeism and quasi-authoritarianism 
 were banished." At the same time articles began to appear 
 in the Commonweal gravely discussing the methods or 
 putting up barricades in London streets. 
 
 Morris had learned his lesson. <c Such finish to what 
 of education in pradical Socialism I am capable of," he 
 wrote a few years later with a touch of acid humour, u I 
 received from some of my Anarchist friends, from whom 
 I learned, quite against their intention, that Anarchism 
 was impossible, much as I had learned from Mill, against 
 his intention, that Socialism was necessary." But before 
 severing his connexion with the League, Morris made a 
 final statement and appeal. It appeared in the Common- 
 weal for the 15th of November, 1890, and summed up 
 his attitude towards the cause which he had, in spite of 
 all disillusionments, as deeply as ever at heart. He re- 
 views the strange history of the movement with calmness 
 and not without a certain pride. 
 
 " It is now some seven years," he writes, u since 
 Socialism came to life again in this country. To some 
 the time will seem long, so many hopes and disappoint- 
 ments as have been crowded into them. Yet in the 
 history of a serious movement seven years is a short 
 time enough ; and few movements surely have made so 
 much progress during this short time in one way or 
 another as Socialism has done. 
 
 " For what was it which we set out to accomplish ? 
 To change the system of society on which the tremend- 
 ous fabric of civilization is founded, and which has been 
 built up by centuries of conflict with older and dying 
 systems, and crowned by the vidory of modern civiliza- 
 tion over the material surroundings of life. Could seven 
 years make any visible impression on such a tremendous 
 undertaking as this ? 
 
 * Consider, too, the quality of those who began and 
 
jet. 57] WILLIAM MORRIS 233 
 
 carried on this business of reversing the basis of modern 
 society ! A few working men, less successful even in 
 the wretched life of labour than their fellows ; a sprink- 
 ling of the intellectual proletariat, whose keen pushing 
 of Socialism must have seemed pretty certain to extin- 
 guish their limited chances of prosperity ; one or two 
 outsiders in the game political ; a few refugees from the 
 bureaucratic tyranny of foreign Governments ; and here 
 and there an unpractical, half-cracked artist or author. 
 
 " Yet such as they were, they were enough to do 
 something. Through them, though not by them, the 
 seven years of the new movement toward freedom have, 
 contrary to all that might have been expected, impressed 
 the idea of Socialism deeply on the epoch. 
 
 " It cannot be said that great unexpected talent for 
 administration and conduct of affairs has been developed 
 amongst us, nor any vast amount of foresight either. 
 We have been what we seemed to be (to our friends I 
 hope) — and that was no great things. We have be- 
 tween us made about as many mistakes as any other 
 party in a similar space of time. Quarrels more than 
 enough we have had ; and sometimes also weak assent 
 for fear of quarrels to what we did not agree with. 
 There has been self-seeking amongst us, and vainglory, 
 and sloth, and rashness ; though there has been at least 
 courage and devotion also. When I first joined the 
 movement I hoped that some working-man leader, or 
 rather leaders, would turn up, who would push aside all 
 middle-class help, and become great historical figures. I 
 might still hope for that, if it seemed likely to happen, 
 for indeed I long for it enough ; but to speak plainly it 
 does not seem so at present. Yet, I repeat, in spite of 
 all drawbacks the impression has been made, and why ? 
 The reason has been given in words said before, but 
 which I must needs say again : because that seemingly 
 
234 THE LIFE OF [1890 
 
 inexpugnable fabric of modern society is verging towards 
 its fall ; it has done its work, and is going to change 
 into something else. 
 
 11 So much at least we have to encourage us. But are 
 not some of us disappointed in spite of the change of 
 the way in which Socialism is looked on generally ? It 
 is but natural that we should be. When we first began 
 to work together, there was little said about anything 
 save the great ideals of Socialism ; and so far off did we 
 seem from the realization of these, that we could hardly 
 think of any means for their realization, save great 
 dramatic events which would make our lives tragic 
 indeed, but would take us out of the sordidness of the 
 so-called f peace' of civilization. With the great ex- 
 tension of Socialism, this also is changed. Our very 
 success has dimmed the great ideals that first led us on ; 
 for the hope of the partial and, so to say, vulgarized 
 realization of Socialism is now pressing on us. I think 
 that we are all confident that Socialism will be realized : 
 it is not wonderful, then, that we should long to see — to 
 feel — its realization in our own lifetime. Methods of 
 realization, therefore, are now more before our eyes than 
 ideals : but it is of no use talking about methods which 
 are not, in part at least, immediately feasible, and it is 
 of the nature of such partial methods to be sordid and 
 discouraging, though they may be necessary. 
 
 cc There are two tendencies in this matter of methods: 
 on the one hand is our old acquaintance palliation, ele- 
 vated now into vastly greater importance than it used to 
 have, because of the growing discontent, and the obvious 
 advance of Socialism; on the other is the method of 
 partial, necessarily futile, inconsequent revolt, or riot 
 rather, against the authorities, who are our absolute 
 masters, and can easily put it down. 
 
 " With both of these methods I disagree ; and that 
 
jet. 57] WILLIAM MORRIS 235 
 
 the more because the palliatives have to be clamoured 
 for, and the riots carried out, by men who do not know 
 what Socialism is, and have no idea what their next step 
 is to be, if contrary to all calculation they should happen 
 to be successful. Therefore, at the best our masters 
 would be our masters still, because there would be no- 
 thing to take their place. We are not ready for such a 
 change as that ! 
 
 "I have mentioned the two lines on which what I 
 should call the methods of impatience profess to work. 
 Before I write a very few words on the only line of 
 method on which some of us can work, I will give my 
 views about the present state of the movement as briefly 
 as I can. 
 
 u The whole set opinion amongst those more or less 
 touched by Socialism, who are not definite Socialists, is 
 towards the New Trades' Unionism and palliation. Men 
 believe that they can wrest from the capitalists some por- 
 tion of their privileged profits, and the masters, to judge 
 by the recent threats of combination on their side, believe 
 also that this can be done. That it could only very partially 
 be done, and that the men could not rest there if it were 
 done, we Socialists know very well ; but others do not. 
 
 <c I neither believe in State Socialism as desirable in 
 itself, nor, indeed, as a complete scheme do I think it 
 possible. Nevertheless, some approach to it is sure to 
 be tried, and to my mind this will precede any complete 
 enlightenment on the new order of things. The success 
 of Mr. Bellamy's Utopian book, deadly dull as it is, is a 
 straw to show which way the wind blows. The general 
 attention paid to our clever friends, the Fabian lecturers 
 and pamphleteers, is not altogether due to their literary 
 ability ; people have really got their heads turned more 
 or less in their direction. 
 
 " Now it seems to me that at such a time, when people 
 
236 THE LIFE OF [1890 
 
 are not only discontented, but have really conceived a 
 hope of bettering the condition of labour, while at the 
 same time the means towards their end are doubtful ; or, 
 rather, when they take the very beginning of the means 
 as an end in itself, — that this time when people are ex- 
 cited about Socialism, and when many who know no- 
 thing about it think themselves Socialists, is the time of 
 all others to put forward the simple principles of Social- 
 ism regardless of the policy of the passing hour. 
 
 " My readers will understand that in saying this I am 
 speaking for those who are complete Socialists — or let us 
 call them Communists. I say for us to make Socialists 
 is the business at present, and at present I do not think 
 we can have any other useful business. Those who are 
 not really Socialists — who are Trades' Unionists, dis- 
 turbance-breeders, or what not — will do what they are 
 impelled to do, and we cannot help it. At the worst 
 there will be some good in what they do ; but we need 
 not and cannot heartily work with them, when we know 
 that their methods are beside the right way. 
 
 " Our business, I repeat, is the making of Socialists, 
 i.e., convincing people that Socialism is good for them 
 and is possible. When we have enough people of that 
 way of thinking, they will find out what adtion is neces- 
 sary for putting their principles in practice. Therefore, 
 I say, make Socialists. We Socialists can do nothing else 
 that is useful." 
 
 This grave and reasoned statement drew forth a volley 
 of shrill protest and abuse from the Anarchists of the 
 League. " Our comrade lectures us ! " one of them writes 
 indignantly in the next number of the journal ; and 
 another replies by a frantic appeal to use dynamite and 
 make open war upon society. But Morris had already 
 left the League. The moment he did so it began to 
 crumble away like sand. The offices of the League in 
 
jet. 57] WILLIAM MORRIS 237 
 
 Farringdon Road had been already given up for a year, 
 and theCommonweal had been issued from small premises 
 in Great Queen Street. Now the rent was not forth- 
 coming for these ; they were in their turn vacated, and 
 for the remainder of its brief and restless life the Com- 
 monweal was issued from a temporary address in Lamb's 
 Conduit Street, where some of the members of the 
 League kept a small grocery store under the sounding 
 name of the Socialist Co-operative Federation. The 
 weekly issue of the Commonweal at once ceased. It 
 continued a struggling life as a monthly for upwards of 
 a year. Its preaching became more and more violent. 
 At last the slow-moving arm of authority came down 
 upon it. In April, 1892, certain men describing them- 
 selves as Anarchists had been arrested and tried at 
 Walsall on the charge of manufacturing high-explosive 
 bombs ; and four of them were sentenced to long terms 
 of penal servitude. A violent article appeared in the 
 next issue of the Commonweal, declaiming against the 
 Home Secretary, the Judge, and the Inspector of Police 
 who had conducted the case, and asking if such men 
 were fit to live. The authorities were weary of this per- 
 petual recurrence of what was on the face of it incite- 
 ment to murder, and determined to make an end of it 
 once for all. C. W. Mowbray and D. J. Nicoll, the 
 former registered as printer and publisher, the latter as 
 proprietor, of the Commonweal, were arrested a few days 
 later. When tried on the criminal charge, Mowbray, 
 who asserted that he had disapproved of the particular 
 article in question, and was able to prove that he had 
 taken no active part in the publication of the Common- 
 weal for two or three months back, was acquitted ; Nicoll 
 was convicted and sentenced to eighteen months' impri- 
 sonment. This was the end of the Commonweal, and 
 with it of the last remnants of the Socialist League. 
 
238 THE LIFE OF [1890 
 
 By that time Morris was too busy with other things 
 to be deeply concerned ; nor had the treatment he had 
 received from his unfortunate colleagues been such as a 
 patience not absolutely inexhaustible could survive. One 
 allusion to the matter is preserved in his correspondence. 
 Writing to his daughter on the 21st of April, 1892, 
 " You will be sorry to see," he says, " that Nicoll and 
 Mowbray, two of our old comrades, have got into trouble 
 with the Commonweal. It was very stupid of Nicoll, 
 for it seems that he stuck in his idiotic article while 
 Mowbray was away, so that the latter knew nothing of 
 it. I think Mowbray will get off. I am sorry for him, 
 and even for the Commonweal/' 
 
 While therefore Morris's withdrawal in November, 
 1890, from the membership of the Socialist League by 
 no means meant that he had ceased to be a convinced 
 Socialist or had in any important way modified his doc- 
 trine, it did imply an important change in the condudl 
 of his own life. The weary work of militant Socialism 
 was now over for him. To make Socialists, mainly 
 by the quiet influence of ideas ; to keep the flame alive 
 till the slow advance of time and thought had pre- 
 pared the fuel for it, remained still what he conceived of 
 as his duty : but this was rather a way of living and 
 thinking than an aftive struggle, an expenditure of time 
 and money, or that expense of spirit which was even a 
 heavier and a more wasteful drain. A small body of his 
 own immediate circle, those connected with him by friend- 
 ship or neighbourhood, had hitherto been organized as 
 the Hammersmith Branch of the Socialist League. They 
 now seceded along with him, and formed themselves into 
 an independent body named the Hammersmith Socialist 
 Society. The secession was resolved upon on the 21st 
 of November. Two days afterwards they met, to the 
 number of about a dozen, and organized themselves 
 
alt. 57] WILLIAM MORRIS 239 
 
 under a very simple body of rules. The circular, drafted 
 by Morris, which they sent out to the other branches of 
 the Socialist League in England and Scotland — by this 
 time their number had dwindled to ten, four in London 
 and six in the provinces — is studiously quiet in its wording. 
 
 <c We think it proper," he wrote, " to write you a 
 brief explanation of the aftion which the Hammersmith 
 Branch of the Socialist League has thought it necessary 
 to take in separating itself from the League. 
 
 cc It has been impossible for us to be blind to the fa6t 
 that there have been once more growing up two parties 
 in the League, one of which has been tending more and 
 more to Anarchism, and the other has been opposed to 
 that tendency ; the paper of the League, the Common- 
 weal, has, by a vote of the last Conference, been put into 
 the hands of those who represent the Anarchist views : 
 and the majority of the Council are of that way of think- 
 ing. Several articles have appeared in the Commonweal 
 with the approbation of the majority of the Council, 
 which we have felt did not represent our opinions. Under 
 these circumstances there were two courses for us to 
 pursue ; first to remain in the League, and oppose what- 
 ever seriously thwarted our views, and secondly to with- 
 draw from it and carry on our propaganda independently. 
 We have chosen the second course ; because we believe 
 in the sincerity of our comrades with whom we disagree ; 
 and we think that however much they might be disposed 
 to yield to us and to keep articles which we should not 
 approve of out of the paper, they could not do so with- 
 out looking upon us as a drag upon their freedom of 
 speech and adlion. And moreover a great part of our 
 time which should be spent in attacking capitalism would 
 have to be wasted in bickering with our own comrades. 
 Therefore we think it much better to retire in a friendly 
 way, keeping our own freedom and not interfering with 
 
 1 
 
2 4 o THE LIFE OF [1890 
 
 that of others, and thus have formally withdrawn our- 
 selves from the League. 
 
 " We have reconstituted ourselves under the name of 
 the Hammersmith Socialist Society, and hope and believe 
 that our efforts in pushing forward Socialism will be 
 rather stimulated than retarded by the new position that 
 we have been forced into, and that we shall take every 
 opportunity, whenever we feel ourselves able to do so, of 
 afting cordially with all bodies of Socialists both in and 
 out of the Socialist League." 
 
 The conditions of membership in the Society were 
 limited to a general agreement with the principles of 
 Socialism, as explained in the manifesto to be issued by 
 it, and a payment of a shilling as annual subscription. 
 Its objedl was defined, or was left undefined, as the 
 spreading of the principles of Socialism. Its place of 
 meeting was named as being at Kelmscott House, and a 
 few simple regulations as to officers and candidates made 
 up the remainder of its constitution. Mr. E. Walker 
 was, and still is, the secretary of the Society. Morris 
 himself was treasurer. The old room in Kelmscott 
 House continued to be at the service of the members 
 for meetings, which were held twice a week for several 
 years. As time went on they became more intermittent ; 
 and at last the Society continued to exist only in the 
 sense that it never was formally dissolved. 
 
 " I have got to rewrite the manifesto for the new 
 Hammersmith Society/' Morris writes on the 9th of 
 December, 1890, c< and that I must do this very night : 
 it is a troublesome and difficult job, and I had so much 
 rather go on with my Saga work." 
 
 The manifesto does not throw any fresh light on his 
 principles or methods. It is in the main a re-statement 
 of the case against a capitalist system of society; to 
 which a further definition of the aims of the newly- 
 
jet. 57] WILLIAM MORRIS 241 
 
 founded body is added, disclaiming State Socialism as a 
 final ideal, but repudiating with much greater energy 
 any do&rine which tends towards Anarchism. c< It is 
 not the dissolution of society for which we strive, but its 
 re-integration. The idea put forward by some who attack 
 present society, of the complete independence of every 
 individual, that is, of freedom without society, is not 
 merely impossible of realization, but when looked into, 
 turns out to be inconceivable." Passive resistance is 
 proclaimed as the limit of opposition to the existing 
 order, however tyrannical ; and the hope of the future is 
 indicated as a general combination of labour which will 
 slowly drive capitalists from position after position, until 
 at last they find themselves in possession of responsibility 
 without privilege, and voluntarily abdicate an untenable 
 position. 
 
 Throughout the year the projedt of his new printing 
 press and the work to be done in connexion with it had 
 swallowed up all other interests. Even his own work in 
 romance-writing and translating Sagas from the Icelandic 
 took a second place to it. But at these employments, 
 and at his Merton Abbey work, he was also fairly busy, 
 and well contented with them all. In February the 
 magnificent Arras tapestry of the Adoration of the Kings 
 which now hangs in Exeter College Chapel was finished 
 to his complete satisfaction ; nothing better of the kind, 
 he said, had ever been done, old or new. The admission 
 to partnership in the firm of Morris & Co, of Messrs. 
 F. and R. Smith, the two principal sub-managers after 
 Mr. George Wardle's retirement, had relieved Morris 
 from a great deal of the purely mechanical or commer- 
 cial details of management. The romance entitled cc The 
 Story of the Glittering Plain " was written this spring, 
 and was published in the English Illustrated Maga- 
 zine, in the four numbers for the months of June to 
 
 II. R 
 
242 THE LIFE OF [1890 
 
 September, It is perhaps best known as the first book 
 printed at the Kelmscott Press. But it is likewise notable 
 as marking the full and unreserved return of the author 
 to romance. In c< The House of the Wolfings," and 
 even to some degree in "The Roots of the Mountains 99 
 also, there had been a semi-historical setting, and an ad- 
 herence to the conditions of a world from which the 
 supernatural element was not indeed excluded, but in 
 which it bore such a subordinate place as involved no 
 violent strain on probability. Here the imagined world 
 is of no place or time, and is one in which nothing is 
 impossible. The dreamer of dreams has returned to 
 that strange Land East of the Sun, mingled of Northern 
 Saga and Arabian tale, through which the Star-Gazer 
 had passed two and twenty years before in the days of 
 "The Earthly Paradise" : a land in which, like Odysseus 
 and his comrades in the isle of Circe, " we do not know 
 where is the dusk nor where the dawn." The book 
 which the King's daughter shows to Hallblithe in his 
 dream on the Acre of the Undying is a sort of figure of 
 that glittering world, rich with all imagined and un- 
 imaginable wonders, into which Morris had entered long 
 ago, and the door of which always remained open to him. 
 
 "She had in her hand a book covered outside with 
 gold and gems, even as he saw it in the orchard-close 
 aforetime : and he beheld her face that it was no longer 
 the face of one sick with sorrow ; but glad, and clear, 
 and most beauteous. Now she opened the book and 
 held it before Hallblithe and turned the leaves so that 
 he might see them clearly ; and therein were woods and 
 castles painted, and burning mountains, and the wall of 
 the world, and kings upon their thrones, and fair women 
 and warriors, all most lovely to behold, even as he had 
 seen it aforetime in the orchard when he lay lurking 
 amidst the leaves of the bay tree. 
 
jet. 57] WILLIAM MORRIS 243 
 
 "So at last she came to the place in the book where- 
 in was painted Hallblithe's own image over against the 
 image of the Hostage ; and he looked thereon and longed. 
 But she turned the leaf, and lo ! on one side the Hostage 
 again, standing in a fair garden of the spring with the 
 lilies all about her feet, and behind her the walls of a 
 house, grey, ancient, and lovely : and on the other leaf 
 over against her was painted a sea rippled by a little wind 
 and a boat thereon sailing swiftly, and one man alone in 
 the boat sitting and steering with a cheerful countenance ; 
 and he, who but Hallblithe himself. Hallblithe looked 
 thereon for a while and then the King's daughter shut 
 the book, and the dream flowed into other imaginings of 
 no import." 
 
 <c News from Nowhere " had been revised about the 
 same time and was published as a cheap volume in paper 
 covers, which had a large circulation. It is a curious 
 fa6l that this slightly constructed and essentially insular 
 romance has, as a Socialist pamphlet, been translated into 
 French, German, and Italian, and has probably been more 
 read in foreign countries than any of his more important 
 works in prose or verse. The romance itself — if it would 
 not be more correft to speak of it as a pastoral — is of 
 such beauty as may readily win indulgence for its arti- 
 ficiality. A pastoral, whether it places its golden age in 
 the past or the future, is by the nature of the case arti- 
 ficial, and perhaps as much so, though not so obviously, 
 as when it boldly plants itself in the present. The im- 
 mediate occasion which led Morris to put into a connected 
 form those dreams of an idyllic future in which his mind 
 was constantly hovering was no doubt the prodigious 
 vogue which had been obtained the year before, by an 
 American Utopia, Mr. Bellamy's once celebrated 1C Look- 
 ing Backward." The refined rusticity of <c News from 
 Nowhere" is in studied contrast to the apotheosis of 
 
244 THE LIFE OF [1890 
 
 machinery and the glorification of the life of large towns 
 in the American book ; and is perhaps somewhat exag- 
 gerated in its reaction from that pidlure of a world in 
 which the phalanstere of Fourier seems to have swollen 
 to delirious proportions, and State Socialism has resulted 
 in a monstrous and almost incredible centralization. 
 
 Indeed a merely materialist Earthly Paradise was al- 
 ways a thing Morris regarded with a feeling little removed 
 from disgust. That ideal organization of life in which 
 the names of rich and poor should disappear, together 
 with the things themselves,in a common social well-being, 
 was in itself to him a mere body, of which art, as the 
 single high source of pleasure, was the informing soul. 
 "Mr. Bellamy worries himself unnecessarily," he had 
 said in an article in the Commonweal on this very book 
 and its ideas in June, 1889, "in seeking, with obvious 
 failure, some incentive to labour to replace the fear of 
 starvation, which is at present our only one ; whereas 
 it cannot be too often repeated that the true incentive to 
 useful and happy labour is, and must be, pleasure in the 
 work itself." That single sentence contains the sum of 
 his belief in politics, in economics, in art. 
 
 The thought is thus expanded in the same article. " It 
 is necessary to point out," he writes, Cf that there are 
 some Socialists who do not think that the problem of 
 the organization of life and necessary labour can be dealt 
 with by a huge national centralization, working by a kind 
 of magic for which no one feels himself responsible : that 
 on the contrary it will be necessary for the unit of ad- 
 ministration to be small enough for every citizen to feel 
 himself responsible for its details and be interested in 
 them ; that individual men cannot shuffle off the business 
 of life on to the shoulders of an abstradtion called the 
 State, but must deal with it in conscious association with 
 each other : that variety of life is as much an aim of true 
 
jet. 57] WILLIAM MORRIS 245 
 
 Communism as equality of condition, and that nothing 
 but an union of these two will bring about real freedom : 
 that modern nationalities are mere artificial devices for 
 the commercial war that we seek to put an end to, and 
 will disappear with it : and finally, that art, using that 
 word in its widest and due signification, is not a mere 
 adjun6t of life which free and happy men can do without, 
 but the necessary expression and indispensable instrument 
 of human happiness." 
 
 On the 10th of June Morris writes from Kelmscott 
 House to Mrs. Burne-Jones : 
 
 cc I have had three outings, — no, four — two of them 
 business though. Item to Chislehurst after a job : 
 villas (some desperately ugly, others according to the 
 new light) in the beautiful woods with lots of oak grow- 
 ing in them which to me is a treat, as I see so little oak 
 about Kelmscott. Yes, villas and nothing but villas save 
 a chemist's shop and a dry public house near the station : 
 no sign of any common people, or anything but gentle- 
 men and servants — a beastly place to live in, don't you 
 think ? 
 
 " Next place was better — in a way — a house of a very 
 rich — and such a wretched uncomfortable place ! a sham 
 Gothic house of fifty years ago now being added to by a 
 young architect of the commercial type — men who are 
 very bad. Fancy, in one of the rooms there was not a 
 pane of glass that opened ! Well, let that flea stick on 
 the wall. Stanmore is the name of the place : it is really 
 quite pretty about, though only about ten miles from 
 London (near Harrow), great big properties all about, 
 the wall of one park next to the wall of another, which 
 has at any rate preserved the trees. Smith and I walked 
 thence to Edgware over most beautiful meadows with 
 scarce a house to be seen till you come to Edgware, 
 which is a little melancholy town or large village ; old, 
 
246 THE LIFE OF [1890 
 
 not ugly, but too visibly the home of most abundant 
 poverty. 
 
 " The next outing was an Anti-Scrape one to Lincoln. 
 That was exceedingly delightful to me. The town has 
 a terrible blot on it, a great faftory for machines down 
 by the river, which seems to take a pleasure in smoking ; 
 indeed I suppose its masters are pradtically the masters 
 of the whole town. However that is the worst of it : 
 there is a longish oldish street on the flat, and at the end 
 of it a beautiful gate across, now the Guildhall, and it 
 rises steeper and steeper till before you come to the close 
 you almost have to crawl, and most of the way the long 
 leaden roof of the minster is the horizon ; the houses 
 mostly oldish red brick and pantiles. There is another 
 most beautiful gate into the close, over which show the 
 different planes of the minster most wonderfully. The 
 whole place is chock full of history : there is work of the 
 first Norman bishop, Remigius, who strangely enough 
 moved his see there from Dorchester on the Thames, so 
 well known to me. The rest (and almost all) is in 
 gradated periods of Early Pointed ; outside one may 
 perhaps find fault with parts, especially the East Front 
 (only I had a pleasing feeling that I was not responsible 
 for them). But when we got inside all criticism fell, 
 and one felt — well, quite happy — and as if one never 
 wanted to go away again. I had seen it all more than 
 twenty years ago, but somehow was much more impressed 
 this time : the church is not high inside, though it is long 
 and broad, but its great quality is a kind of careful deli- 
 cacy of beauty, that no other English minster that I 
 have seen comes up to : in short a miracle of art, that 
 nowhere misses its intention. There is a little stained 
 glass (early thirteenth century) as good as the best, and 
 some of the sculpture at least belongs to the best work 
 of the time. Outside the church and close to it is a 
 
jet. 57] WILLIAM MORRIS 
 
 247 
 
 huge Norman Castle, the enceinte quite complete, a piece 
 of the keep left : a horrible modern prison and court 
 house inside the old walls. Five minutes from the close 
 gate towards the open country you come on the gate of 
 the Roman town, quite unornamented, but sound and 
 well-built. Down the slope of the hill are still left two 
 twelfth-century houses. One of them, in honour surely 
 of little Sir Hugh, is called the Jew's House ; I cheap- 
 ened an old chest there of a lady somewhat of Mrs. 
 Wilfer's type, who received us with the dignity of a 
 fallen Queen/' 
 
 The fourth outing was a brief visit to Kelmscott. 
 " I am steadily at work," he writes ten days later, <f read- 
 ing my own poems, because we are really going to bring 
 out a one- volume ( Earthly Paradise ' this autumn. Some 
 people would say the work was hard. c The Glittering 
 Plain 9 I have finished some time, and begun another." 
 
 On the 8th of July he writes again : " I have under- 
 taken to get out some of the Sagas I have lying about. 
 Quaritch is exceedingly anxious to get hold of me, and 
 received with enthusiasm a proposal to publish a Saga 
 Library : item he will give me money (or perhaps I 
 ought to say old books). We have got six letters of 
 our new type done and have even had a scrap printed." 
 
 This type, the first produced for the Kelmscott Press, 
 cost Morris almost infinite pains. " What I wanted," 
 he writes of it himself in the Note on his aims in found- 
 ing the Kelmscott Press, " was letter pure in form ; severe, 
 without needless excrescences; solid, without the thicken- 
 ing and thinning of the line which is the essential fault 
 of the ordinary modern type, and which makes it difficult 
 to read ; and not compressed laterally, as all later type has 
 grown to be owing to commercial exigencies. There was 
 only one source from which to take examples of this 
 perfected Roman type, to wit, the works of the great 
 
248 THE LIFE OF [1890 
 
 Venetian printers of the fifteenth century, of whom 
 Nicholas Jenson produced the completest and most Ro- 
 man characters from 1470 to 1476. This type I studied 
 with much care, getting it photographed to a big scale, 
 and drawing it over many times before I began design- 
 ing my own letter ; so that though I think I mastered the 
 essence of it, I did not copy it servilely ; in fa6l, my Ro- 
 man type, especially in the lower case, tends rather more 
 to the Gothic than does JensonV 
 
 By the middle of August eleven punches had been cut 
 for the new fount, and Morris had determined that Cax- 
 ton's u Golden Legend " should be the first large work 
 produced by his press. He himself had recently acquired 
 a copy of the edition of 1527 printed by Wynkyn de 
 Worde. The Kelmscott <c Golden Legend " was, how- 
 ever, set up, not from this, but from Caxton's own first 
 edition of 1483. The almost priceless original was bor- 
 rowed, under a heavy bond in case of loss or injury, from 
 the Cambridge University Library for this purpose. It 
 was transcribed for the press — a work of such laborious 
 magnitude, and one executed so patiently and carefully 
 as to deserve commemoration — by Miss Phillis M. Ellis, 
 the daughter of his old friend and collaborator. Ellis 
 himself took the chief part in superintending the accuracy 
 of the text, a work of no small difficulty. 
 
 On the 29th of August, 1 890, Morris writes to him 
 from Kelmscott : 
 
 " Please pardon me for not answering your letter 
 sooner ; you know my little ways. Also I did want to 
 weigh between the Golden Legend and the Troy book 
 for reprinting : now I have borrowed a Recueil of the 
 Histories of Troy (the Wynkyn de Worde of course) 
 from Quaritch, and have no doubt that the G. L. is by 
 far the most important book of the two : so I accept your 
 kind offer with many thanks indeed, and will begin print- 
 
jet. 57] WILLIAM MORRIS 249 
 
 ing as soon as the type is free from the Glittering Plain, 
 which I take it will be the first book printed in the re- 
 generate type or Jenson- Morris. 
 
 " I inclose a specimen (over-inked) of as far as we 
 have gone at present. I hope you admire its literature — 
 due of course to the compositor. Kind regards to the 
 young she-scribe that is to be." 
 
 The idea of becoming a publisher as well as a printer 
 was one which had not yet occurred to him. An experi- 
 ment was talked of later, but never carried out, of dis- 
 pensing with a publisher by printing off a book and then 
 selling the whole edition by auftion. For u The Golden 
 Legend " an agreement for publication was entered into 
 with Mr. Bernard Quaritch. <c I don't mind having a 
 publisher," Morris said, " so long as he has nothing 
 whatever to do with any question except purely business 
 ones. As to the c prophet ' I want none of him : I only 
 want not to have to drop much, say not above ^100." 
 On this footing it was arranged. The agreement, signed 
 on the nth of September, 1890, provides that the pub- 
 lisher shall pay for the expenses of paper, printing, and 
 binding, and that Morris is to have sole and absolute 
 control over choice of paper and type, size of the re- 
 print, and selection of the printer. The last-named pro- 
 vision indicates that Morris was then still uncertain 
 whether to start a press of his own or to have his new 
 type printed from by some existing firm of printers. The 
 following two letters to Ellis continue the details of the 
 enterprise. 
 
 cc Kelmscott House, 
 
 "Sept. 7th, 1890. 
 
 cc My dear Ellis, 
 
 " I gave Quaritch your letter in person, and we 
 had a talk about the matter : by this time you will have 
 had a letter from him. It seemed to me a matter of 
 
2 so THE LIFE OF [1890 
 
 course to agree, as far as I am concerned, with his pro- 
 position to take the whole expense on himself and do 
 what he can with the 250 copies, since it will then cost 
 us nothing but our work: only it seems to me that your 
 share of the work will be so much the heaviest that I 
 feel rather uncomfortable about it, and think it somehow 
 ought to be made up to you. What I have now chiefly 
 to do is to push on the type-founding side of matters : I 
 will do all I possibly can on this side, so that we may- 
 begin as soon as possible. I should think that we might 
 get some type about Christmas time ; but of course I 
 cannot be sure. Wishing you good luck (I had little 
 with the gudgeons), 
 
 cc I am yours ever, 
 
 "William Morris." 
 
 c< Kelmscott, 
 
 cc Sept. 14th, 1890. 
 
 " My dear Ellis, 
 
 " I have sent on Q.'s copy and now send back 
 yours. Of course I should like the reprint to be of the 
 same form as the original if the Roman type can do it, 
 which I doubt, as black letter takes up less room : in 
 any case some kind of folio it will have to be. As to 
 paper I have heard of two people who may help us, one 
 whom Walker knows and whose mill I propose to visit 
 with Walker almost at once ; and one employed by 
 Allen, Ruskin's publisher. We can do nothing with 
 Whatman but take what he has on the shelves. In one 
 thing I think I differ from you a little, about the 
 joined letters or queer signs : since our book is to be a 
 reprint^ not a fac-simile, I do not think that we need re- 
 produce these : indeed I should extend the abbreviations 
 in order to make the book more readable. However I 
 am open to correction on this point. Don't rest too 
 
jet. 57] WILLIAM MORRIS 251 
 
 much on my date of Christmas for the type : we seem 
 to be getting on very slowly with it at present, and I 
 have only eleven letters cut yet. I can only hope for the 
 best. 
 
 " Yours ever, 
 
 "William Morris." 
 
 By the middle of Oftober u the type is getting on : I 
 have all the lower case letters (26), also I have been de- 
 signing ornamental letters, rather good I think." His 
 excitement over the work was so great that for once he 
 left Kelmscott, when autumn ended, with little regret. 
 " We are coming to London to-day," he writes from 
 there on the 16th of Odtober. " The weather has been 
 very good ; our best day was Monday, when I hear you 
 had a fog ; it was a miracle of a day here : the sort of 
 day when you really can do nothing but stand and stare 
 at it. I am not sorry to come to town. I want to cease 
 from being bumbled up and down, I want to work 
 hard at my easy work." 
 
 The breaking up of the Socialist League and the con- 
 stitution of the Hammersmith Socialist Society, though 
 it took up a measure of his time for the next six weeks 
 in London, hardly disturbed him materially, and did not 
 check the progress of his other work. By the end of the 
 year all but two of the punches for the type, both upper 
 and lower case, were completed, and a compositor and 
 pressman, Mr. William Bowden, had been engaged. The 
 paper was made from linen rag by Messrs. Batchelor & 
 Son of Little Chart, near Ashford, after an Italian pat- 
 tern of the fifteenth century, which Morris supplied. 
 Such care was taken in its manufacture, that the wire 
 moulds were woven by hand to reproduce the slight irre- 
 gularity in the texture of those used by the earliest 
 printers. Morris went down to Little Chart himself with 
 
252 THE LIFE OF [1891 
 
 Mr. E. Walker to see about this paper. With unabated 
 interest in any form of manual art, he must take off his 
 coat and try to make a sheet of paper with his own 
 hands. At the second attempt he succeeded in doing 
 very creditably what it is supposed takes a man several 
 months to master. 
 
 In the course of the year Morris had made one more 
 experiment in the use of type other than his own. This 
 was a small edition of his own translation of the Gunn- 
 laug Saga, which he had printed at the Chiswick Press 
 in a Gothic type copied from a fount used by Caxton. 
 The initials in this little book were left blank in order 
 to be rubricated by hand ; and Morris put them in him- 
 self on two or three copies: but the whole project went 
 no further, and the little book was never published. 
 On the last day of the year he writes to Ellis : 
 " I am very glad that you are getting on so well and 
 like the work. As for me I expedt to have my type in 
 a month, and shall take a room and see about comps. at 
 once. The paper also will not be later, though this 
 matters less as to our date of beginning. One thing may 
 disappoint you — to wit, that we cannot make a double- 
 column page of it, the page will not be wide enough. 
 For my part, I don't regret it: double column seems to 
 me chiefly fit for black letter, which prints up so close. 
 Jenson did not print even his Pliny in double column. 
 But it is a case of a fortiori in modern printing : because 
 we have no contractions, few tied letters, and we cannot 
 break a word with the same frankness as they could : I 
 mean we can't put whi on one side and ch on the other. 
 This makes the spacing difficult, and a wide page de- 
 sirable. 
 
 " Would you kindly give me the Initial letters of the 
 first few sheets of our copy ; I mean state whether they 
 are A's B's and what not ; I want this for our 1 blooming- 
 
jet. 57] WILLIAM MORRIS 253 
 
 letters/ so that I may get ready those which are most 
 wanted." 
 
 With the beginning of 1891 the Kelmscott Press 
 adhially started working. Its first premises, a cottage 
 on the Upper Mall of Hammersmith a few yards from 
 Kelmscott House, were taken possession of on the 1 2th 
 of January. A proof-press and a printing-press were got 
 and set up there. The first sample of the paper arrived 
 on the 27th, and the first full trial page was set up and 
 printed on the 3 1st. During February a sufficient work- 
 ing stock of both type and paper was delivered, and the re- 
 gular working of the Press began. Mr. Bowden's son, who 
 continued to work at the Press until it was closed, was en- 
 gaged as compositor, and a third workman as pressman. 
 
 Meanwhile his research after fine specimens of fif- 
 teenth-century printing went on with unabated zeal. 
 The following letter to J. H. Middleton refers to some 
 of his most recent purchases, made from a dealer named 
 Olschki, whose prices Morris thought rather exorbitant. 
 Middleton was also in dealings with Mr. Olschki on 
 behalf of the Fitzwilliam Museum at Cambridge, of 
 which he was then Dire&or. 
 
 <c Kelmscott House, 
 
 "Jan. 20th, 1 891. 
 
 s€ My dear Middleton, 
 
 " One of those books of Olschki's is a fine book 
 otherwise (John Zeiner, Ulm, 1474) and rare doubtless, 
 and has moreover a very fine woodcut border to first 
 page and some curious initials : I am not buying it be- 
 cause there is, oddly enough, the same border in another 
 of his books (by the same printer, 1475) which is much 
 cheaper. This border is however so fine and so very 
 well printed that I thought you might like it for the 
 Fitzwilliam, since though I think it Jew-dear, I should 
 
254 THE LIFE OF [1891 
 
 have kept it if I had not got the other. The price is 
 ^15, but I daresay O. would take less. Shall I send it 
 you to look at ? I have just bought a very fine and 
 interesting book : Speculum Humanae Salvationis (in 
 Dutch), Culembourg, Veldener, 1483. That says little ; 
 but the point of it is that it has in it all the cuts from 
 the block-book Speculum (1 16) and 12 more seemingly 
 of the same date. These are not recut, but are printed 
 from the original blocks sawn in two down the columns 
 of the canopies : some of these cuts are to my mind far 
 away the best woodcuts ever done, and generally the 
 designs are admirable : at once decorative, and serious 
 with the devotional fervour of the best side of the 
 Middle Ages. The date of the cutting you know is 
 probably about 1430. 
 
 <c Do you know if they have a copy at the University 
 Library ? If they have not I should like to show Mr. 
 Jenkinson the book when I come your way. My copy 
 belonged to the Enschede people, who you may know 
 were a very old firm of type-founders. 
 
 fc By the way I expedl my press will be at work in 
 about a month. 
 
 <c Yours affectionately, 
 
 " William Morris." 
 
 On the nth of February he writes to Ellis : 
 " This is the state of things. The punches all cut, 
 and matrices all struck : I had a little lot of type cast to 
 see if any alterations were required, and set up a page of 
 the 4to as there was not enough for the folio ; I had the 
 g recut because it seemed to me too black. I then 
 ordered five cwt. of the type, which I am told is enough, 
 and am expecting to have it towards the end of this 
 week or beginning of next. As soon as I get it I will 
 set up a trial page of the G. L. 
 
mt. 57] WILLIAM MORRIS 255 
 
 c< Then paper — the trial lot turned out not quite right, 
 not sized quite hard enough, though I think better than 
 any modern paper I have come across. He is going to 
 size it harder. But it is only a little lot (9 reams), there- 
 fore I intend printing a little edition of the Glittering 
 Plain on it. Moreover we had better not be too cock- 
 sure about the paper, we might find it desirable to make 
 a bigger sheet. In any case however we might set up a 
 sedtion or so of the G. L. and let the type be till we had 
 got the paper right. I was not going to send you a 
 specimen of the type till we could set up a page of the 
 G. L. But I can sympathize with my pardner's anxiety ; 
 and accordingly send him a page of the G. P., of course 
 full of defedts, but on the paper and with the types. I 
 don't know what you will think of it ; but I think it 
 precious good. Crane when he saw it beside Jenson 
 thought it more Gothic-looking : this is a fa6t, and a 
 cheerful one to me." 
 
 The first sheet of " The Story of the Glittering Plain, ,, 
 which owing to this accidental collocation of circum- 
 stances was the first book printed at and issued from the 
 Kelmscott Press, was printed off on the 2nd of March, 
 and the last on the 4th of April. Only two hundred 
 copies on paper, besides six on vellum, were printed. It 
 was issued in May by Messrs. Reeves and Turner, 
 Morris's ordinary publishers. The printing had been 
 carried through under great difficulties. Towards the 
 end of February Morris was laid up for several weeks 
 with a severe attack of gout, attended by other symp- 
 toms of an alarming kind. On consultation the kidneys 
 were found to be gravely affe&ed ; and he was told that 
 henceforth he must consider himself an invalid to the 
 extent of husbanding his strength and living under a 
 very careful regimen. 
 
 In the height of the attack, and before he was able to 
 
256 THE LIFE OF [1891 
 
 hold a pen, — " my hand seems lead and my wrist string " 
 — he writes to Ellis with unconquerable spirit : 
 
 "And now as to the joint enterprise : I have got my 
 type and am hard at work on the Glittering Plain, which 
 I hope to get out in about six weeks time ; about the 
 same time I expedt the first instalment of my due stock 
 of paper ; and I don't see why we then should not be 
 ready to go ahead with G. L., only I certainly must see 
 you before we settle matters. Meantime, as soon as I 
 can stand up, or before, I will get a mere trial page or 
 two of the G. L. set up, and then you can get some idea 
 of the number of pages. 
 
 " Yes, 'tis a fine thing to have some interesting work 
 to do, and more than ever when one is in trouble — I 
 found that out the other day." 
 
 From Folkestone, where he had gone to pick up his 
 strength after this illness, he writes a month later, " I 
 think I shall make some scratch of a border to each life 
 or section. I want to make it grand. I have a specimen 
 of the new paper this morning, it is admirable — couldn't 
 be better." While there, he designed the ornamental 
 border for the first page of "The Golden Legend," and 
 several of the large floriated initials, or c< bloomers," as 
 they are called in the traditional slang of the press. As 
 soon as he came back to London, a regular pressman 
 was permanently engaged (the one got in to help in the 
 printing of "The Story of the Glittering Plain" had only 
 been taken for the job) and the printing of fc The Golden 
 Legend" began to go steadily on. The first sheet was 
 printed off by the middle of May: and before the end of 
 that month the Press had been removed into larger 
 premises in Sussex House, next door to the cottage first 
 occupied by it. 
 
 " The new printed sheets of the G. L. look very well 
 indeed," says a letter of the 20th of May. " Pleased as I 
 
iBT. 58] WILLIAM MORRIS 257 
 
 am with my printing, when I saw my two men at work 
 on the press yesterday with their sticky printers' ink, I 
 couldn't help lamenting the simplicity of the scribe and 
 his desk, and his black ink and blue and red ink, and I 
 almost felt ashamed of my press after all. I am writing 
 a short narrative poem to top up my new book with. 
 My wig ! but it is garrulous : I can't help it, the short 
 lines and my old recollections lead me on/' 
 
 The volume of his own collected verses which, under 
 the title of " Poems by the Way," was the second book 
 issued from the Kelmscott Press, did not actually begin 
 to be printed till July : but during May he was busy 
 in collecting and passing judgment on those shorter un- 
 published poems of his own which were to form its main 
 contents. He was habitually careless about his own 
 manuscripts, and kept no record of what he had written 
 or even of what he had published. Without the help of 
 Mr. Fairfax Murray, into whose hands a number of the 
 unpublished manuscripts had passed, and who had kept 
 a record of all the poems which had ever been printed in 
 magazines or elsewhere, the collection could hardly have 
 been made. As it is, a number of his poems, which 
 would have come within the general scope of the book, 
 escaped his notice altogether. Apart from the longer 
 narrative poems belonging to the period of cc The 
 Earthly Paradise," there are still sufficient of these yet 
 unpublished pieces, — lyrics, sonnets, and ballads, — to 
 make up a second volume of cc Poems by the Way 99 as 
 large as the first. 
 
 Among the pieces which had been rescued from total 
 disappearance by Mr. Murray were a few belonging to 
 the earliest years, the period of c< The Defence of 
 Guenevere." Of two of them he writes to Murray, 
 " Catherine puzzles me : I have not the slightest recol- 
 lection of any stanza of it. Did I write it? Is it a 
 
 11. s 
 
258 THE LIFE OF [1891 
 
 translation ? I think not the latter ; but it is devilish 
 like. It is much too long, and I fear it is too rude to 
 be altered. The Long Land I like in a fashion. But 
 O the callowness of it ! Item it is tainted with imitation 
 of Browning, as Browning then was." None of these 
 very early pieces were finally included in the volume 
 published. The poem of <c Goldilocks and Goldilocks," 
 which concludes the volume, was the only one written for 
 it now: the remainder of its contents, which are placed in 
 a studied disarrangement, fall into two groups. One of 
 these consists of poems written in the six or seven years 
 between 1867 and 1874, the period which begins with 
 c< The Life and Death of Jason " and ends with " Love is 
 Enough." The other is made up of poems of a period 
 divided from the former by an interval of ten years. It 
 begins with the first of the €C Chants for Socialists" of 
 1884 ; and includes the political verses, as they might be 
 called, of militant Socialism, the fragments which he 
 thought most worthy of survival from his versified 
 Socialist romance of the <c Pilgrims of Hope," and the 
 ballads and romantic pieces of the three or four years 
 which had elapsed since the beginnings of his return to 
 literature. Intermediate between the two main groups, 
 and of very various dates, are the verses for his own 
 tapestries,or for Burne- Jones's pictures, of which between 
 thirty and forty are printed in the volume. Only one 
 poem previously unpublished, tc The Folkmote by the 
 River," belongs to the more recent years. 
 
 Some of the poems of the earlier period have a special 
 history or association. " The God of the Poor " (which 
 had already been printed in the Fortnightly Review for 
 August, 1868) was almost, if not quite, the first piece he 
 wrote when he resumed the writing of poetry after 
 he had left Red House. The two beautiful lyrics, 
 " From the Upland to the Sea 99 and " Meeting in 
 
jet. 58] WILLIAM MORRIS 
 
 259 
 
 Winter," are songs from cc The Story of Orpheus/' which 
 had been written for " The Earthly Paradise/' but never 
 published. " A Garden by the Sea " is a later version of 
 the song of the water-nymph to Hylas in the fourth book 
 of cc The Life and Death of Jason/' The minute differ- 
 ences in 'language, in one of the most haunting and ex- 
 quisitely finished of all his lyrics, are of no little interest. 
 The lines " To the Muse of the North," it may be 
 worth while to note, were written before his first visit 
 to Iceland, and show more clearly than any comment 
 how the land and all that had come from it filled his ima- 
 gination. The curious poem entitled u Pain and Time 
 Strive Not," which is of a date somewhere between 1 87 1 
 and 1873, is remarkable as the single instance in which 
 Morris, after the first enthusiasm of his early years in 
 London had cooled, has distinctly imitated the manner 
 and versification of Rossetti. 
 
 "The title of my new book," Morris wrote to his 
 publishers in June, " will be Poems by the Way ; the 
 format the same as the Glittering Plain. It will be 
 printed in red and black. The poems will include some 
 recently written and some written many years ago. 
 Some have appeared in magazines, but with the two ex- 
 ceptions of a little piece out of the Jason and one out of 
 the Ogier, they will none of them have been printed in 
 any book of mine." 
 
 The cc little piece out of the Jason " is the one just 
 mentioned ; that from " Ogier the Dane," which was in 
 the end not included, was one of the versions of the song 
 beginning In the white-flowered hawthorn brake^ in that 
 poem. These two lyrics are, in the opinion of many 
 judges, the most beautiful of all he ever wrote, and 
 both are among the rare instances of lyrics which re- 
 mained for years in his mind, and which he remodelled 
 or retouched again and again. Two earlier versions of 
 
260 THE LIFE OF [1891 
 
 this latter piece are extant : its original form, as a lyric 
 in the cc Scenes from the Fall of Troy," has been already 
 quoted. An intermediate version occurs in the cancelled 
 and rewritten Prologue to cc The Earthly Paradise/' 
 Whether the lyric which he proposed to insert in the new 
 volume was one of these two earlier versions, or (as in 
 the case of the lyric from cc Jason ") a later version than 
 that already published, and in that case a fourth version 
 of the same piece, there are now no means of discovering. 
 
 In this pleasant work, and in the aftive joy of return- 
 ing health, the spring and summer passed easily away. 
 "The blossom is splendid," he writes on the 10th of 
 May. cc London in the older parts like the Inns of 
 Court really looks well in this spring-time with the bright 
 fresh green against the smoky old walls. Spring over, 
 it becomes London again, and no more an enchanted 
 city." 
 
 cc I have the usual complaint at my pen's end of no- 
 thing to tell," he adds two days later. cc The weather 
 is beautifully bright and quite hot ; the pear and cherry 
 blossom is going off, and spring will soon have slid into 
 summer, though the lilac is yet to come." 
 
 cc It is a hottish close morning," says a letter of the 
 3rd of June, "rather dull with London smoke. I have 
 just been down the garden to see how things were doing, 
 and find that they are getting on. Not so many slugs 
 and snails by a long way, and the new planted things 
 are growing now; the sweet peas promising well, the 
 peonies in bud, as well as the scarlet poppies. All well 
 at the press : we are now really getting on, so that finish- 
 ing the Golden Legend is looking something more 
 than a dream." 
 
 At the end of July he writes from Folkestone to Mrs, 
 Burne-Jones just before starting on a tour in Northern 
 France with his daughter Jenny : 
 
jet. 58] WILLIAM MORRIS 261 
 
 " I am ashamed to say that I am not as well as I should 
 like, and am even such a fool as to be rather anxious — 
 about myself this time. But I suppose the anxiety is part 
 of the ailment. I hope you are better, as I have still some 
 anxiety left for the service of my friends. 
 
 " On Sunday we had a strange show : a sea-fog came 
 on in the afternoon after a bright morning, which gradu- 
 ally invaded the whole land under the downs ; but we 
 clomb to the top of them and found them and all the 
 uplands beyond lying under a serene calm sunny sky, 
 the tops of the cliffs towards Dover coming bright and 
 sharp above the fog, and throwing a blue shadow on it ; 
 below a mere sea of cloud, not a trace of the sea (proper), 
 wave on wave of it. It looked like Long Jokull (in 
 Iceland), only that was glittering white and this was 
 goose-breast colour. I thought it awful to look on, and 
 it made me feel uneasy, as if there were wild goings on 
 preparing for us underneath the veil." 
 
 The French tour of three weeks in August was the 
 renewal of one of his earliest affe&ions : and he writes 
 that his delight in the country, "the river-bottoms with 
 the endless poplar forest, and the green green meadows," 
 and in the beautiful churches, was as keen and as un- 
 clouded as it had been thirty-three years before. cc I 
 have given myself up to thinking of nothing but the 
 passing day and keeping my eyes open." 
 
 The two letters which follow were written to Mr. 
 Emery Walker on the journey. In the first, the refer- 
 ence at the beginning is to the fount of Gothic type 
 which he had just designed for the Kelmscott Press, and 
 which was now in course of being cut by Mr. Prince. 
 " By the Way " in the second was the familiar and dis- 
 respectful title of his new volume of poems. 
 
262 THE LIFE OF ^091 
 
 " Beauvais, 
 cc August 13th, 1 89 1. 
 
 " My dear Walker, 
 
 cc Many thanks for your letter and inclosures. I 
 chuckled over the upside down A. I have written to 
 Prince : he has now done e i h 1 n o p r t. The t does 
 not look well : I think I shall have to re-design it. The 
 e also looks a little wrong, but might be altered. The 
 rest look very well indeed. I shall be pretty certainly 
 at home on August 30. I leave for Soissons to-morrow, 
 and I suppose shall get to Reims on Saturday. But I 
 don't think we shall find any place better than this : the 
 town is delightful quite apart from the Cathedral and 
 St. Stephen's. Also our inn is comfortable, which is 
 something. We went a long drive yesterday (morning 
 drizzly, afternoon downright wet, but a jolly drive of 
 near twenty miles and back) and saw the two churches 
 of Gournay en Bray, and St. Germer en Fly : both early 
 and interesting ; the second exceedingly beautiful : a 
 huge church, Norman, with vaulting and insertions of 
 transitional, and a long lady-chapel with its vestibule, 
 time of St. Louis (late thirteenth century). The chapel 
 (not the vestibule) had been restored, pretty badly ; but 
 had three stained windows (of its own date) about as 
 good as any I ever saw. The rest of the church quite 
 unrestored : also there are grills of twelfth century round 
 the choir. The west end, traditionally said to have 
 been burned by the Burgundians (c. 1470), is very de- 
 fedtive, but a plain (but good) abbey gateway remains. 
 Altogether a wonderful church. Gournay, a much 
 smaller church ; the nave very early Norman (before 
 the middle of century I should say), but with transition 
 vaulting : transepts and choir mainly transition with each 
 a big early decorated window in it : east end square and 
 window coming low down. The carving on caps of 
 
jet. 58] WILLIAM MORRIS 263 
 
 nave very curious, no two alike; mostly rude (some 
 very) , but many beautiful. I am sorry to say that this 
 admirable nave has been badly restored, even to the re- 
 cutting of some of the caps : perhaps the French Society 
 might stop this game, as those that are left are extra- 
 ordinarily valuable. As to the west front it was thir- 
 teenth century ; but is now nineteenth, and bad at that ; 
 they have even done new sculptures for the tympanums. 
 As for the town of Gournay it is uninteresting, but 
 they make cream cheeses of the very best : crede mihi 
 experto. 
 
 " Certainly the Cathedral here is one of the wonders 
 of the world : seen by twilight its size gives one an im- 
 pression almost of terror : one can scarcely believe in it. 
 But when you see the detail, it is so beautiful that the 
 beauty impresses you more than the size. 
 
 cc We are just going to read the late stained glass at 
 St. Stephen's, which is very amusing, lots of it. 
 
 cc The arms of the chapter are gules a cross argent 
 with four keys of the same cantoned if I blazon it right : 
 the arms of the town, gules a pale argent. The town 
 has lost its walls, but they are in a way traceable, for the 
 town ditch fed by two little rivers goes all round : there 
 is a very big central place also, so that the plan of the 
 town is very good. 
 
 " Yours affe6Honately, 
 
 "William Morris." 
 
 <c Reims, Marne, 
 
 "August 1 6th. 
 
 " My dear Walker, 
 
 " We have just come out of the Cathedral, which, 
 though a wonderful place, is, if I am right, not so great 
 a work as Amiens, Beauvais, or Soissons. The latter 
 was our last place on our way here. I thought the 
 
264 THE LIFE OF [1891 
 
 church there most extraordinarily beautiful. Except for 
 the end of the north transept (which is early decorated) 
 it is all of the earliest Gothic, not very big (but wide), 
 of great simplicity and of the utmost refinement. The 
 south transept is much lower than the north and ap- 
 sidal ; the interior of it, of two vaulted stages, com- 
 parable in beauty to Hugh's work at Lincoln (though 
 not like it), Gothic at its best. There have been some 
 bad restorations there, but it is not destroyed. The 
 worst is the black lining of the ashlar of the choir down 
 to the triforium. Here the outside has already been 
 restored (including the work they are doing to the south 
 transept, which looks very bad), but excepting the west 
 front with its amazing wealth of imagery: though they 
 do not here seem to touch the figure sculptures. Per- 
 haps it might be of use to memorialize the French 
 Society upon this and some other points. 
 
 " Here the whole of the clerestory (except the win- 
 dows of the choir blocked up by the restoration at present) 
 has its stained glass, of the most splendid quality, though 
 a good deal patched. If Grant Allen should see it he 
 would find it justified his views of jewellery completely ; 
 for no collection of gems could come within a hundred 
 miles of it. All the way from Beauvais to Compiegne, 
 Soissons and here, the churches seem very fine and mostly 
 early. The country round Soissons is very beautiful. 
 It is built on the side of the Aisne, a river about as big 
 there as the Thames at Reading: we saw vines there for 
 the first time this journey. The arms of Soissons city 
 are azure a fleur de lys argent. The chapter carries, I 
 think, under a chief of France a tower. The tinctures I 
 did not see, as I take my information from a lamp-post, 
 of Napoleon's time, I suppose, as the fleur de lys were 
 bees. There are some fine tapestries hung up in the aisles 
 here in very good preservation, c. 1520 I think. They 
 
mt. 58] WILLIAM MORRIS 265 
 
 make splendid ornaments. I intend studying them and 
 the stained glass and the sculpture to-morrow properly. 
 
 <f I heard from Bowden that he has sent on another 
 sheet and some Golden Legend, but it has not yet come : 
 will to-morrow, I suppose. Jacobi has sent me two 
 sheets of the cheap By the Way : it looks well. I have 
 not done one letter since I started, my work being mostly 
 staring and walking and eating. We intend going on to 
 Laon on Tuesday, which will probably mean getting to 
 Folkestone on Saturday or Sunday next and home the 
 day after. Get Hooper to do the colophon before he 
 goes off if you can, as otherwise it might stick us. 
 
 c< Yours affectionately, 
 
 " William Morris." 
 
 Cf St. Remy a very fine church : some glass there even 
 finer than that in Cathedral, twelfth century." 
 
 On the 23rd of September he writes to his daughter 
 Jenny at Kelmscott : " I expert the book " — the " Poems 
 by the Way " — "will be all printed to-morrow, and will 
 go to the binders on Monday. They are printing the 
 colophon sheet to-day, which is exciting. Item, Mr. 
 Quaritch has sent me in a specimen copy of volume 2 
 of the Saga Library, so I suppose I shall bring it along 
 with me. I shall probably bring along a copy of the 
 cheap f Glittering Plain,' and the cheap c Poems by the 
 Way ' will soon be out. So you see, my own, that if it 
 doesn't rain c blue elephants ' it may almost be said to 
 rain new books of mine. Do you know, I do so like 
 seeing a new book out that I have had a hand in. Mr. 
 Prince is also getting on with the new fount of type, but 
 when I shall begin to print with it I really don't know. 
 
 " Before I finish the news, I must tell you that about 
 6 o'clock yesterday a stout man called (like a Scotch 
 farmer) and announced himself as the keeper of the dogs 
 
<i66 THE LIFE OF WILLIAM MORRIS [1891 
 
 at the Doggeries; he said he had wanted to take the 
 house again, but I had forestalled him, and now he wanted 
 to rent the kennels of me : he was so polite that all I 
 could say was that I did not think I would, also that I 
 would ask my wife. Of course I won't let him have 
 them. 
 
 " I am going to give a dinnerparty on Friday to Ellis, 
 Phillis and Cuthbert and Harry. And then on Saturday, 
 ho for Kelmscott ! I shall be so glad to see my dear 
 again." 
 
CHAPTER XX 
 
 PRINTING, ROMANCE-WRITING, TRANSLATION, AND 
 criticism: FINAL ATTITUDE TOWARDS 
 ART AND HISTORY 
 189I-I893 
 
 The life of Morris from that autumn until his last ill- 
 ness was one of placid continuity of production, with 
 little variety of external incident. From the illness of 
 the spring of 1 89 1 he never fully recovered ; and though 
 he enjoyed several years more of fair health, his bodily 
 powers became gradually less able to respond to the 
 calls of his unflagging intellectual energy. The amount 
 of work he had already done, in literature, in art, in 
 politics, in handicraft, was enough to fill not one, but 
 many lives ; and the machinery which had been working 
 at continuous high pressure for so long began to show 
 signs of permanent weakening. But in these latter years 
 his whole personality ripened and softened. The out- 
 bursts of temper so familiar to his earlier friends ceased. 
 The impatience born of intense craving for sympathy and 
 understanding died away. The training of the years of 
 co-operation with impracticable colleagues in the Social- 
 ist party had not been lost. Mr. Selwyn Image, speak- 
 ing from intimate acquaintance as a colleague on the 
 executive committee of the Arts and Crafts Society and 
 in the Art Workers' Guild, records, as the deepest im- 
 pression made on him, that of Morris's extraordinary 
 patience and conciliatoriness : and the same testimony is 
 
268 THE LIFE OF [1891 
 
 borne by others who worked along with him. cc O how 
 I long to keep the world from narrowing me, and to 
 look at things bigly and kindly ! " Thus he had written, 
 in a letter of more than usually intimate self-revelation, 
 nearly twenty years before ; and the prayer had been 
 heard. Like the southern autumn of Virgil, the year 
 remained fruitful in its mellow decline : 
 
 — dant arbuta silv<e^ 
 Et varios ponit fetus auftumnus, et alte 
 Mitts in apricis coquitur vindemia saxis. 
 
 The Kelmscott Press remained until towards the end 
 of these years his engrossing preoccupation. Next to it 
 in his interest were his own romances. He had prac- 
 tically ceased to write original poetry. As to one of 
 these tales indeed, that entitled fc Child Christopher and 
 Goldilind the Fair," he wavered for some time whether 
 he should write it in verse or prose, and actually began 
 it in verse, but quickly gave it up. He announced this 
 decision to Burne-Jones the next time they met, observ- 
 ing at the same time, in what is perhaps the most sweep- 
 ing of all his generalizations, that poetry was tommy 
 rot. But the prose romances all contain snatches of lyric 
 verse, and besides his metrical rendering of Ci Beowulf," 
 other verse, original and translated, was written by him 
 now and again. Foremost perhaps in beauty among 
 these lyrics of later summer, and deserving to be re- 
 claimed here from the obscure pages of the Catalogue 
 of the fourth Exhibition of the Arts and Crafts Society, 
 are the verses which he wrote for an embroidered hang- 
 ing, designed and worked by his daughter May for his 
 own bed, a fine piece of carved oak of the seventeenth 
 century, in the Manor House at Kelmscott. 
 
 The wind 's on the wold 
 And the night is a-cold, 
 
jet. 58] WILLIAM MORRIS 269 
 
 And Thames runs chill 
 'Twixt mead and hill. 
 But kind and dear 
 Is the old house here 
 And my heart is warm 
 "Midst winter's harm. 
 Rest then and rest, 
 And think of the best 
 'Twixt summer and spring, 
 When all birds sing 
 In the town of the tree, 
 And ye lie in me 
 And scarce dare move, 
 Lest earth and its love 
 Should fade away 
 Ere the full of the day. 
 I am old and have seen 
 Many things that have been ; 
 Both grief and peace 
 And wane and increase. 
 No tale I tell 
 Of ill or well, 
 But this I say, 
 Night treadeth on day, 
 And for worst and best 
 Right good is rest. 
 
 Besides his own story-writing, he continued the pleas- 
 ant labour of translating from the Icelandic and mediaeval 
 French. He le&ured, when time and strength permitted, 
 on the arts of life, more especially now on printing and 
 its kindred arts. He remained a6tive in the service of 
 the Society for Protection of Ancient Buildings. Whether 
 in the defence of ancient buildings like Westminster 
 Abbey and Peterborough Cathedral against the injuries 
 
270 THE LIFE OF [1891 
 
 of the restorer, or in the prote&ion of the natural beauties 
 of England, as in Epping Forest or on the upper Thames, 
 against the inroads of planned ugliness or inconsiderate 
 change, his voice and pen were always active when called 
 upon. Nor did he decline from the unobtrusive work 
 of education towards the growth of a future Socialism. 
 It is to these last years that some of his noblest and most 
 significant utterances on the ideals of human life belong 
 — notably among them the preface to Ruskin's chapter 
 <c On the Nature of Gothic," and the letter of November, 
 1893, on the Miners' Question, his latest and most care- 
 fully-worded confession of faith. 
 
 In October, 1891, an exhibition of pi&ures of the 
 Pre-Raphaelite School was held in the Municipal Art 
 Gallery at Birmingham, and Morris was asked to open 
 it with an address on the Pre-Raphaelite painters. The 
 speech which he then made represents the most formal 
 discourse he had yet given on the art of painting, as one 
 distindt from, yet in the closest relation to, the arts which 
 he himself practised. It perhaps expresses his views not 
 the less exadtly because it was spoken on the spur of the 
 moment, and was the imperfedt but immediate utterance 
 of his habitual feelings. The curiously halting sentences 
 and inconclusive termination are accounted for very 
 simply. He had meant to think out what he would say 
 on the journey down to Birmingham, but fell asleep in 
 the train and arrived with nothing prepared. 
 
 Professing himself a humble member of the school, 
 he stated as his deliberate convidtion that its principal 
 masters, Rossetti, Millais, Holman Hunt, and Burne- 
 Jones, were names that ranked alongside of the very 
 greatest in the great times of art : then, not labouring 
 this point, he commended their example to all artists, not 
 primarily for any technical quality, but for the virtues 
 of patience, diligence, and courage. These were the 
 
jet. 58] WILLIAM MORRIS 271 
 
 qualities that went to make great men ; and great men 
 might be trusted to do great work. 
 
 As regards the technique of painting, Morris had, from 
 his own early practice of the art as well as from the in- 
 sight of his immense genius, a knowledge that was not 
 less great because he seldom showed it. But the art of 
 painting always took its place in his mind as one of the 
 arts subordinate to architecture, though it might be the 
 first of these. The inflexible naturalism and minute 
 finish of the early Pre-Raphaelites, he held, were neces- 
 sary at the time to startle men out of the lethargy of a 
 long convention, but they hardly represented the per- 
 manent method in which the painters art should employ 
 itself. His own artistic intelligence had been as a matter 
 of fad first awakened by that militant and, one might 
 almost say, aggressive type of picture. cc I remember 
 distinctly myself/' he said in this address when speaking 
 of the Pre-Raphaelite revolt against an outworn academic 
 tradition, " as a boy, that when I had pictures offered to 
 my notice I could not understand what they were about 
 at all. I said, c Oh well, that is all right : it has got the 
 sort of thing in it which there ought to be in a picture : 
 there is nothing to be said against it, no doubt. I can- 
 not say I would have had it other than that, because it 
 is clearly the proper thing to do.' But really I took very 
 little interest in it." For a short period he had been as 
 profound an admirer of the earlier work of the Pre- 
 Raphaelite Brotherhood as any of the school, and had 
 himself worked hard at being a painter in the Pre- 
 Raphaelite manner. When this temporary enthusiasm 
 passed over, pictures took a place in his mind among the 
 various methods of decorating surfaces. Except for his 
 unbroken and almost daily intimacy with Burne- Jones, 
 he did not see much of painters as such, nor was he a 
 frequenter of studios or picture galleries. When he did 
 
272 THE LIFE OF [1891 
 
 see a pidture he saw what there was in it at a single 
 glance ; his eye for both design and colour was here, as 
 elsewhere, infallible, and his memory portentous. But 
 easel-pi6tures seem, as a rule, to have given him the un- 
 easy feeling of decoration disproportionate in labour and 
 finish to its decorative objedt. With a painted book he 
 had not this feeling ; nor with the gem-like masterpieces 
 of the Flemish and early Italian schools which approxi- 
 mate in method and fiirsh to the pictures in a painted 
 book. But for pidlures on a larger scale and in a broader 
 manner he would have preferred frescoes or even tapestries. 
 Sir Edward Burne- Jones told me that Morris would 
 have liked the faces in his pictures less highly finished, 
 and less charged with the concentrated meaning or 
 emotion of the painting. As with the artists of Greece 
 and of the Middle Ages, the human face was to him 
 merely a part, though no doubt a very important part, of 
 the human body. In speaking of the qualifications re- 
 quired from tapestry-weavers, it was on their skill in 
 rendering the feet and hands, not the faces, of the figures, 
 that he laid special stress. He was quite satisfied with 
 the simple and almost abstrad types of expression that 
 can be produced in tapestry ; and he thought that the 
 dramatic and emotional interest of a pifture ought to be 
 diffused throughout it as equally as possible. Such too 
 was his own pradtice in the cognate art of poetry : and 
 this is one reason why his poetry affords so few memor- 
 able single lines, and lends itself so little to quotation. 
 Either quality would have been a merely incidental merit, 
 and perhaps even a defe6t, in the view of his art which 
 he himself held. 
 
 With the National Gallery indeed, or at least with 
 those rooms in it which contained the works which were 
 after his own heart, he was intimately familiar. Angelico, 
 Van Eyck, and Holbein, his three greatest admirations 
 
jet. 58] WILLIAM MORRIS 273 
 
 among the painters of past ages, he admired as pro- 
 foundly as he did any artist whatever. In one of the 
 later numbers of the Commonweal, while discussing in 
 a fragmentary and parenthetic way what the art of the 
 future under realized Socialism might be like, he makes 
 some remarks on the pidtures in the National Gallery 
 which incidentally open up his whole mind on the sub- 
 je6t of pidlorial art. " Perhaps," he says, " mankind 
 will regain their eyesight, which they have lost to a great 
 extent ; people have largely ceased to take in mental im- 
 pressions through the eyes, whereas in times past the 
 eyes were the great feeders of the fancy and imagination. 
 I am in the habit when I go to an exhibition or a pidture 
 gallery of noticing their behaviour there; and as a rule I 
 note that they seem very much bored, and their eyes 
 wander vacantly over the various objeds exhibited to 
 them. If ordinary people go to our National Gallery, 
 the thing which they want to see is the Blenheim 
 Raphael, which, though well done, is a very dull pi&ure 
 to any one not an artist. While, when Holbein shows 
 them the Danish princess of the sixteenth century yet liv- 
 ing on the canvas, the demure half-smile not yet faded 
 from her eyes ; when Van Eyck opens a window for 
 them into Bruges of the fourteenth century ; when Botti- 
 celli shows them Heaven as it lived in the hearts of men 
 before theology was dead, these things produce no im- 
 pression on them, not so much even as to stimulate 
 their curiosity and make them ask what 'tis all about ; 
 because these things were done to be looked at, and to 
 make the eyes tell the mind tales of the past, the present, 
 and the future." Yet deeply as Morris admired these 
 pictures, he scarcely loved them with his deepest love ; 
 he would willingly at any time have exchanged the Na- 
 tional Gallery and all its contents for the cases of painted 
 books in the British Museum. A man may be known 
 
 II. T 
 
274 THE LIFE OF [1892 
 
 by his company, inanimate as well as human ; and while 
 Morris had a small but choice colle&ion of painted books 
 among his chief treasures, and gladly paid large sums to 
 secure one, his house was, with a few exceptions for 
 which there were special reasons, pidrureless, and he 
 never bought a picture after the early days when he had 
 ceased trying to paint them. 
 
 From this brief excursion into art criticism he re- 
 turned to the work of his printing-press. In November 
 he was discussing the printing of all his own works, 
 meaning then to begin with the cc Sigurd/' A second 
 and larger press had been bought, and a new pressman 
 and two new compositors engaged ; and the printing of 
 the Interminable, as <c The Golden Legend" had come to 
 be called, was making rapid progress. Before the end of 
 the year he was discussing the form of the great Chaucer 
 which it was his ambition to print. The Troy type, the 
 first of his two Gothic founts, had been cut and was then 
 being cast: but "it is so big that it is no use thinking 
 of printing the Chaucer in double columns with it unless 
 the book were to be as big as Eggestein's Gratian's De- 
 cretum," — a leviathan among printed books, of which 
 an uncut copy measures twenty inches by fifteen and 
 weighs nearly thirty pounds. Before the end of the 
 year he had determined on having another fount cut 
 smaller from the same designs; and these two, with the 
 original Roman or " Golden " fount, were the only three 
 that he adually produced and printed from, though in 
 the course of the year 1 892 he partially designed another. 
 u I am at work at my story and other trifles," he writes 
 to Ellis just before Christmas. But he was so busy now 
 with the Press that even story-telling had to be dropped. 
 This was one of several romances which he began in these 
 years, and discontinued either because he was not satisfied 
 with them or from mere lack of time. "The Wood 
 
mt. 58] WILLIAM MORRIS 275 
 
 beyond the World/' his next published romance, was not 
 completed till quite two years later. 
 
 The small printing-press had been occupied during 
 the earlier part of the winter of 1891-2 in turning out 
 the third of the Kelmscott Press books, the volume of 
 poems by Mr. Wilfrid Blunt. As soon as that volume 
 was finished, it was set to work upon a reprint of 
 Ruskin's celebrated chapter " On the Nature of Gothic" 
 from "The Stones of Venice." It was the first thing that, 
 when Morris met with it long ago at Oxford, had set fire to 
 his enthusiasm, and kindled the beliefs of his whole life. 
 In the preface to this reprint, dated 15th February, 
 1892, he states briefly and clearly the effed which Rus- 
 kin's teaching had had on himself, and the permanent 
 value which he still conceived it to possess. " To 
 my mind," he says, this chapter " is one of the most 
 important things written by the author, and in future 
 days will be considered as one of the very few necessary 
 and inevitable utterances of the century. To some of 
 us when we first read it" — in those dawn-golden days 
 at Oxford — <c now many years ago, it seemed to point 
 out a new road on which the world should travel. The 
 lesson which Ruskin here teaches us is that art is the 
 expression of man's pleasure in labour ; that it is possible 
 for man to rejoice in his work, for, strange as it may 
 seem to us to-day, there have been times when he did 
 rejoice in it." 
 
 Even more : in this chapter, and in the subsequent 
 teaching which did little more than expand and enforce 
 it, Ruskin had laid, once for all, the basis for a true 
 Socialism. For without art Socialism would remain as 
 sterile as the other forms of social organization; it would 
 not meet the real and perpetual wants of mankind. 
 The social dodrines of the thinkers and theorists who 
 had preceded Ruskin, like those of the others who, 
 
276 THE LIFE OF [1892 
 
 coming after him, had ignored or denied this essential 
 element in his doctrine, would in practice <c certainly 
 lighten the burden of labour, but would not procure for 
 it the element of sensuous pleasure which is the essence 
 of all true art." Of themselves they could go no further 
 in their utmost success than create a world in which art 
 would be possible : but that world would be a body still 
 waiting, numb, joyless, and lifeless, for the entrance of 
 the quickening spirit. 
 
 This preface was no sooner written, than Morris fol- 
 lowed it by another utterance which has had little public 
 circulation, but which gives his best literary qualities — 
 his power of lucid statement, his immense and easily- 
 wielded knowledge of architecture and history, his earnest- 
 ness, his humour, and his mastery of biting phrase — 
 with a perfection that is hardly equalled elsewhere. This 
 was the paper on Westminster Abbey written by him for 
 the Society for Protection of Ancient Buildings and fin- 
 ished on the 7th of March. Its immediate occasion was 
 a proposal then being discussed for the cc complete re- 
 storation " of the interior of the Abbey, and the addition 
 to it, by public munificence or private enterprise, of some 
 kind of annex which might give room for further monu- 
 ments to distinguished men. That such a consummate 
 monument of the noblest style and period of European 
 architecture should be turned, as it long had been, into a 
 " registration office for notorieties " was felt by him as 
 wanton and inexcusable sacrilege : and this proposal not 
 only to continue and extend that degrading usage, but to 
 mutilate the Abbey still further under such a pretext by 
 remodelling or enlargement, was one the mere mention 
 of which roused him into fury. As regards the church 
 itself, each fresh piece of restoration was in his deliberate 
 judgment more scandalous and more ruinous than its 
 predecessors. During the seventeenth and eighteenth 
 
jet. 58] WILLIAM MORRIS 277 
 
 centuries it had indeed suffered heavily, but its worst 
 sufferings had been reserved for modern times. " Being 
 situated in the centre of government," he bitterly writes, 
 " it has not enjoyed the advantages of boorish negleCt, 
 which have left so much of interest in remoter parts of 
 the country." On the work of Wren and his successors 
 down to Wyatt, the architects of cc the ignorance," to use 
 that Arabian phrase which Morris was so fond of quot- 
 ing, he touches with a light scorn, gibbeting their work 
 as "the Bible and Prayer-book style of the period," 
 " the queer style of driven-into-a-corner Classic." With 
 Wyatt and the first period of Gothic knowledge, whose 
 architects were far more destructive than those of the 
 Gothic ignorance, worse changes began. Wyatt <c man- 
 aged to take all the romance out of the exterior of the 
 most romantic work of the late Middle Ages," Henry 
 VII. 's Chapel. Blore, followed by Gilbert Scott, " com- 
 pletely destroyed all trace of the handwork of the medi- 
 aeval masons " in the north aisle. Scott, when he was 
 made architect of the Abbey and the second period of 
 Gothic knowledge had arrived, " carefully restored the 
 Chapter House, that is, he made it a modern building." 
 Finally Mr. Pearson, cf driven by the necessity of making 
 some structural repairs," carried out the idea of making a 
 conjectural restoration of the north transept. The facade 
 of the eighteenth century, a time when architects cc had 
 not learned how to forge, and put some of their own 
 thought, poor as that was, into it," was accordingly de- 
 stroyed. It was replaced by " dead-alive office work," 
 covered with " what is called ecclesiastical sculpture — 
 so utterly without life or interest that nobody who passes 
 under the portal of the church on which it is plastered 
 treats it as a work of art any more than he does the 
 clergyman's surplice," " a joyless, putty-like imitation, 
 that ^ad better have been a plaster-cast." As for the 
 
278 THE LIFE OF [1892 
 
 " pieces of undertakers' upholstery " within the church, 
 all that could be done with them was to let them alone. 
 u The burden of their ugliness must be endured, at any 
 rate until the folly of restoration has died out; for the 
 greater part of them have been built into the fabric, and 
 their removal would leave gaps, not so unsightly indeed 
 as those stupid masses of marble, but tempting to the 
 restorer, who would make them excuses for further in- 
 troduction of modern work." 
 
 fc It may seem strange/' Morris adds, rising into the 
 higher plane of his habitual thoughts, <f that whereas we 
 can give some distinguished name as the author of 
 almost every injury it has received, the authors of this 
 great epic itself have left no names behind them. For 
 indeed it is the work of no one man, but of the people 
 of south-eastern England. It was the work of the in- 
 separable will of a body of men, who worked, as they 
 lived, because they could do no otherwise, and unless you 
 can bring these men back from the dead, you cannot 
 c restore ' one verse of their epic. Rewrite the lost 
 trilogies of iEschylus, put a beginning and an end to the 
 Fight at Finsbury, finish the Squire's Tale for Chaucer, 
 and if you can succeed in that, you may then ' restore 9 
 Westminster Abbey." 
 
 By this time the smaller Gothic fount was being cut 
 for the Kelmscott Chaucer, after a momentary hesitation 
 caused by his having seen for the first time the earlier or 
 semi-Gothic type (" what asses they were to change it for 
 the Roman type " is his characteristic comment) used by 
 Sweynheym and Pannartz for the Subiaco Laftantius. 
 Much of the immense vitality of earlier years still sur- 
 vived, though more and more fitfully : on the 9th of 
 April, " happening to be awake at 6 a.m. I went and got 
 my book and wrote several pages of story." In May he 
 was beginning to see daylight at last with f< The Golden 
 
mt. 59] WILLIAM MORRIS 279 
 
 Legend." The two magnificent drawings by Burne- 
 Jones of the Earthly and Heavenly Paradises had been 
 completed, and the first was now being cut on the wood. 
 Both were touched up for the wood-engraver by Mr. 
 Fairfax Murray in a photographic copy. The last sheet 
 of the text was read by Morris in proof on the 31st of 
 May. The large printer's mark with a pi&ure of the 
 house at Kelmscott in it, which Morris then meant to 
 design for his colophon, was not executed, and was re- 
 placed in the book as it appeared by the device which 
 had already appeared in several of the smaller books, a 
 small design with the words " Kelmscott " and u William 
 Morris" in Gothic lettering on a floriated background 
 and border. 
 
 Meanwhile Morris sought consolation for any occa- 
 sional qualms that he may have had as to the artistic 
 limitations of the finest printed books in a more and 
 more impassioned devotion to thirteenth-century manu- 
 scripts. At the sale of the Lawrence collection this 
 month he spent £250 on three of those, a little Psalter 
 and little Book of Hours and the fragment of a folio 
 Bible. Nearly all summer through he stayed in London 
 by his Press, though with wistful thoughts now and again 
 of haymaking going on fast in the big meadow, and of 
 the hollyhocks in the garden at Kelmscott. Burne-Jones 
 was beginning the series of drawings for Chaucer, and 
 the form and detail of the great folio was taking definite 
 shape in Morris's mind. By the middle of September 
 the printing of the Interminable was done, the two great 
 full-page woodcuts being the last part, as they were the 
 most anxious, to print. On the 16th it went off, in two 
 cartloads, in joyful procession to the binders. To 
 celebrate the auspicious and long-awaited event Morris 
 bought a vellum copy of Jenson's " dementis Constitu- 
 tions " of 1476, and then took himself off" to Kelmscott. 
 
a8o THE LIFE OF [1893 
 
 Once the Press was released from fc The Golden Le- 
 gend/' the production of smaller books went on through 
 the winter of 1892-3 with accelerated and almost reckless 
 speed. The reprint of Caxton's cc Historyes of Troye," 
 the first book issued in the large Gothic type which 
 Morris had designed in 1891, as the famous original 
 had been, more than four hundred years before, the first 
 book printed in English, is dated the 14th of Oftober. 
 It was rapidly succeeded by the " Biblia Innocentium," 
 dated 22nd October; u News from Nowhere," dated 
 22nd November; and the reprint of Caxton's "Rey- 
 nard the Foxe" of 148 1, dated 15th December. 
 This last Morris accounted far and away the best of 
 all Caxton's books in its literary quality : " he has the 
 true smell and smile." Then followed the cc Poems of 
 William Shakespeare," dated 17th January, 1893; and 
 after it, the reprint of Caxton's c< Order of Chivalry" of 
 1484, dated 10th November, 1892, but held back in 
 order to be issued in a single volume together with 
 another little book. This was the text and Morris's 
 own verse translation of " L'Ordene de Chevalerie," a 
 French poem of the thirteenth century which has been 
 thought to be the original of the fourteenth-century 
 prose treatise translated and printed by Caxton. It is 
 dated 24th of February, 1893. The translation had 
 first been made in prose by Ellis. But Morris one day 
 suddenly remembered the fad that the Press, like the 
 firm of thirty years back, ff kept a poet of its own," and 
 turned him on for the purpose. Finally, to make up 
 the production of that remarkable winter, appeared 
 Cavendish's cc Life of Wolsey," dated 30th March ; and 
 the reprint of Caxton's " Godefrey of Boloyne " of 
 148 1, dated 27th April. In the <f Order of Chivalry," 
 and in parts of the cc Historyes of Troye," the smaller 
 Gothic type which had been cut and cast for the Chaucer 
 
jet. 60] WILLIAM MORRIS 281 
 
 made its first appearance. After this continuous torrent 
 of produ&ion the Press for a time slackened off a little. 
 Morris was advised that this rapid output of his books 
 would depreciate the value of those already issued, and 
 might end in the new books becoming unsaleable at their 
 fair value. But for these warnings he did not greatly 
 care: " the Kelmscott Press is humming" was his exultant 
 comment, and he felt sure that his work was good enough 
 to command a market. " I shall print that Froissart " 
 was all his reply to an argument that it could only be 
 printed as he designed it at a heavy loss. But the 
 Froissart, which was to have taken the next place after 
 the Chaucer among his most rich and elaborate produc- 
 tions, was little more than begun when the Press ceased 
 after the death of its founder. 
 
 By the end of 1892 Morris had made up his mind to 
 add the trade of a publisher to that of a printer. cc There 
 is really no risk in it," he said in summing up the situa- 
 tion : c< I shall get more money ; and the public will have 
 to pay less." The reprint of Caxton's u Reynard the 
 Foxe," then just finished, was in fad the last of his large 
 books that he issued through a publisher, though with 
 the smaller books the old practice was for some time 
 continued. But the reprint of Caxton's <c Godefrey of 
 Boloyne," issued in the following May, bore on it for the 
 first time the words " Published by William Morris at 
 the Kelmscott Press" : the " Utopia" of the following 
 September was the last Kelmscott book issued through 
 Messrs. Reeves & Turner; and thenceforth, except in 
 a few cases of special arrangement (as when Tennyson's 
 "Maud" was published by Messrs. Macmillan,and the two 
 volumes of Rossetti's poems by Messrs. Ellis & Elvey), 
 Morris published all Kelmscott Press books himself. 
 Once more, as in so many previous ventures, he trusted 
 to the existence of a market for excellence and was not 
 
282 THE LIFE OF [1893 
 
 disappointed. The Kelmscott Press was not carried on 
 to make money : at first he would have been content if 
 it had not cost him more than he could afford to spend, 
 and even afterwards it was worked, and the prices fixed 
 for its products, only with the view of making its receipts 
 meet its expenditure. No expense was spared in getting 
 everything connected with it as near his ideal as could be 
 produced ; yet in fad it brought in a profit which repre- 
 sented a fairly adequate salary for his own incessant work 
 and oversight, and relieved him from the necessity of 
 economizing on any expense which would really add to 
 the excellence and beauty of his printed books. 
 
 In the immense detail of carrying on the work of the 
 Press, which was beyond a single person's management 
 unless he could give up the whole of his time to it, 
 Morris was already being assisted by Mr. S. C. Cockerell, 
 who was formally engaged as secretary to the Press in 
 July, 1894. It is only due to Mr. Cockerell to say that 
 these last years of Morris's life were greatly lightened 
 by his diligence and devotion. For the first time in his 
 life his papers were kept in order : the labour of corre- 
 spondence, which had always been irksome to him, and 
 was one of the few things that he felt as really hard work, 
 was relieved : his library was catalogued ; and the con- 
 duct, not only of the Press, but of his whole business, 
 was made as easy to him as the nature of the case ad- 
 mitted. The relations between them grew to be of great 
 intimacy and confidence, and added much to the happi- 
 ness of both. 
 
 At the beginning of 1893 the beautiful little series of 
 translations from thirteenth-century French prose ro- 
 mances which were printed by Morris in this and the 
 following year began to be proje&ed. " There is a little 
 book," hewrote in January, <c of the Librairie Elzevirienne 
 hight Contes et Nouvelles de la XHIme Siecle : two of 
 
jet. 60] WILLIAM MORRIS 283 
 
 these are amongst the most beautiful works of the Middle 
 Ages, and I intend translating them, and printing in a 
 nice little book in Chaucer type. Probably I shall de- 
 sign some two-coloured letters for it." 
 
 The work of which he misquotes the title with his 
 characteristic carelessness when he was writing a letter, 
 " Nouvelles Francoises en prose du XHIme Siecle," a 
 little book published in 1856, had for thirty years been 
 one of the treasures of literature to him. Together with 
 the U Violier des Histoires Romaines," which appeared 
 in the same series two years later, it had been among the 
 first sources of his knowledge of the French romance of 
 the Middle Ages. In thanking Morris for a copy of 
 the last of the three little Kelmscott volumes, Mr. 
 Swinburne recalls their delight in reading the French 
 " in the days when we first foregathered at Oxford " 
 nearly forty years before. On two of the stories in the 
 French volume, c< Le Conte de TEmpereur Coustant" 
 and " L'Amitie d'Amis et d' Amile," he had based two 
 of the stories for " The Earthly Paradise " ; the former 
 appears in the work under the title of " The Man Born 
 to be King " ; the latter was the never published poem of 
 "Amis and Amillion. ,, He now translated and printed 
 these and two others. The fifth, the famous pastoral 
 romance of Aucassin and Nicolete, he left untouched, as 
 it was already well known in two English versions. The 
 first of the stories which Morris published, a translation 
 of the romance entitled " Le Conte du Roi Flore et de la 
 Belle Jehanne," was issued under the title of c < The Tale 
 of King Florus and the Fair Jehane " at the end of this 
 year. It is dated 16th of December, 1893. "Amis 
 and Amile" succeeded it in April, 1894: "the Amis 
 and Amile I translated in one day and a quarter, it was 
 very easy: a most beautiful little book"" ; and " The Tale 
 of the Emperor Coustans," with which was included a 
 
284 THE LIFE OF [1893 
 
 fourth story, cc L'Histoire d'Outre-Mer," entitled in the 
 English <c The History of Over Sea," in the following 
 September. The project of two-colour letters printed 
 from double blocks was never carried out by him in 
 these or any other of the Kelmscott Press books, though 
 several designs in red and blue were made by him for 
 that purpose. 
 
 f< I am very busy all round, and ought to be busier, 
 but can't be," he cheerfully writes in March. He had set 
 to work on designing the ornament for the Kelmscott 
 Chaucer. That for the first page was just finished to his 
 complete satisfa&ion. <c My eyes ! how good it is ! " 
 was his own criticism on it. He had also begun his 
 metrical version of cc Beowulf." That great fragment 
 of the earliest English epic he had hitherto only ad- 
 mired from a distance. He was not an Anglo-Saxon 
 scholar, and to help him in following the original he used 
 the aid of a prose translation made for him by Mr. A. J. 
 Wyatt, of Christ's College, Cambridge, with whom he 
 also read through the original. The plan of their joint 
 labours had been settled in the autumn of 1892. Mr. 
 Wyatt began to supply Morris with his prose paraphrase 
 in February, 1893, and he at once began to " rhyme 
 up," as he said, cc very eager to be at it, finding it the 
 most delightful work." He was working at it all through 
 the year, and used to read it to Burne- Jones regularly on 
 Sunday mornings in summer. It was not fully finished 
 till the end of 1894, and was published in February, 
 1895. It would seem on the whole, in spite of the love 
 and labour Morris had bestowed on it, to be one of his 
 few failures. Anglo-Saxon scholars do not regard it as 
 a satisfactory rendering of the original ; and still less do 
 ordinary readers find it a book that can be read with 
 pleasure for its own sake. For the language of his ver- 
 sion Morris for once felt it necessary to make an apology. 
 
jet. 60] WILLIAM MORRIS 285 
 
 Except a few words, he said, the words he used in it 
 were such as he would not hesitate to use in an original 
 poem of his own. He did not add, however, that their 
 effect, if slipped sparingly in amid his own pellucid con- 
 struction and facile narrative method, would be very 
 different from their habitual use in a translation which 
 must in any case, if it were faithful to the original, be 
 often both harsh and obscure. In his desire to repro- 
 duce the early English manner he allowed himself a 
 harshness of construction and a strangeness of vocabulary 
 that in many passages go near to making his version un- 
 intelligible. A poem which professes to be modern and 
 yet requires a glossary fails of one of its primary objects. 
 The obscurity of many parts of the original, made more 
 obscure by gaps and corruptions in the text, cannot be got 
 over in any translation which Morris would have re- 
 garded, or which it is possible fairly to regard, as faithful: 
 but this means that the only translation practicable is a 
 paraphrase, an <c interpretation," as it was called in the old 
 editions of the classics, which shall not profess to repro- 
 duce the original, but confine itself to the humbler use of 
 being printed below the original to make it easier of 
 comprehension. As the work advanced, he seems to 
 have felt this himself, and his pleasure in the doing of it 
 fell off. Between this, and the slow progress of the 
 Chaucer, which was chiefly owing to the great difficulty 
 of getting Burne-Jones's designs satisfactorily rendered 
 upon wood — rt we shall be twenty years at this rate in 
 getting it out," he writes rather dolefully in May — he 
 was not in the best of spirits that summer about his 
 printing, and began to think that some caution in re- 
 stricting his output might be not undesirable. 
 
 Another matter which seriously vexed him was the 
 total defeat in Convocation, in June, 1893, of his attempt 
 to save the mediaeval statuary on the spire of St. Mary's, 
 
286 THE LIFE OF [1893 
 
 Oxford, from the hands of the restorer. Those images 
 were much decayed and loosened by past neglect, and 
 were as they stood admittedly unsafe : the question, 
 therefore, became one in which Morris's principles as 
 regards restoration came into the sharpest conflict with 
 those of the ordinary architect. Stated briefly,the question 
 was one of sacrificing truth and history on the one hand, 
 or appearance on the other. " Jackson took me up on 
 the spire," Morris writes after his return from Oxford, 
 c< and I had a good look at the images and fought Jack- 
 son at every point. The fad: is, he would now willingly 
 keep the images, if he could do so without visibly band- 
 ing and tying them, but this he funks. This was my 
 chief point ; as I refused to be led into a discussion as 
 to whether they could be tied up to look neat^ but stuck 
 to it that even if they had to be covered with a cage of 
 bars it should be done rather than removing them " — 
 and replacing them, it is to be understood, by copies 
 professing to be originals. 
 
 The twelve statues grouped round the base of that 
 magnificent spire, still in spite of all restorations and re- 
 constructions the c< eye of Oxford," the central crown of 
 all her architecture, were among the noblest surviving 
 examples of English sculpture of the early fourteenth cen- 
 tury. Time and neglect had seriously impaired several of 
 them ; and in the first restoration of the spire, carried out 
 by the architect Buckler according to the ideas of that 
 c< second period of Gothic knowledge " which Morris 
 held in such profound contempt, just at the time when 
 Morris himself went up to Exeter as an undergraduate, 
 two had been wholly removed and replaced, and some of 
 the others had been largely repaired. When the second 
 restoration was decided upon and placed in the hands 
 of Mr. T. G. Jackson, the ten ancient statues were the 
 only important features of the spire which had not been 
 
jet. 60] WILLIAM MORRIS 287 
 
 already tampered with, and their importance was thus 
 doubled. Mr. Jackson's first report was that they were 
 all so much perished that it was not safe to allow even 
 their ruins to remain. Owing to the decay of the hold- 
 fasts, certain heads and hands were so loose that they 
 could be lifted off. But the surface of the stone had 
 weathered to such hardness that it resisted the point of 
 a knife; and the bodies, which were solid set into the wall 
 behind them, had adhially to be sawn from their settings 
 before they could be taken down. The noble figures of 
 the Virgin, of St. Edward the Confessor, and of St. John 
 the Baptist, as they now lie stored in the basement of 
 the Convocation House, may be specially cited as ex- 
 amples, apart from any question of historic interest, of 
 the purest feeling and most consummate artistic excellence. 
 Of the copies by which they have been replaced on the 
 base of the now doubly and triply reconstructed mass of 
 pinnacles from which the central spire springs into the 
 sunlight, it may be left to future generations to judge. 
 But the judgment will be — so Morris insisted — upon 
 works of the nineteenth century which profess to be, and 
 are not, works of nearly six hundred years earlier. 
 
 The death of Tennyson in Odtober, 1892, had left 
 vacant the titular primacy of English poetry, which he 
 had held for forty-two years. When the question of 
 appointing a new Poet Laureate was opened, the name 
 of Morris, as by amount and quality of a&ual work pro- 
 duced undoubtedly among the foremost of living English 
 poets, was one of those which could not be ignored. 
 His political creed would indeed have assorted but 
 strangely with the holding of an office in the Royal 
 Household ; nor could any one who knew him, however 
 slightly, think without a smile of his writing official 
 odes, or posing as the eulogist of the existing order and 
 the triumphs of the Vi&orian age. As regards his per- 
 
288 THE LIFE OF [1893 
 
 sonal views on the matter, Mr. Gladstone, who had 
 then just become for the fourth time Prime Minister, 
 kept his own counsel : and it is matter of common 
 knowledge that no recommendation was ever made by 
 him to the Queen, and that the office remained unfilled 
 for three years during his Government and the ad- 
 ministration which succeeded it. But after this lapse of 
 time it may not be indiscreet to say that Morris was 
 sounded by a member of the Cabinet, with Mr. Glad- 
 stone's knowledge and approval, to ascertain whether he 
 would accept the office in the event of its being offered 
 to him. His answer was unhesitating. He was frankly 
 pleased that he had been thought of, and did not under- 
 value the implied honour : but it was one which his 
 principles and his tastes alike made it impossible for him 
 to accept. The matter went no further. In private 
 conversation Morris always held that the proper func- 
 tion of a Poet Laureate was that of a ceremonial writer 
 of official verse, and that in this particular case the 
 Marquis of Lome was the person pointed out for the 
 office — should the office be thought one worth keeping 
 up under modern conditions — by position and acquire- 
 ments. 
 
 While the Socialist organizations had been dwindling 
 as active forces, the permeation of public opinion by 
 Socialistic ideas had continued to make slow but notice- 
 able progress. Taught by bitter experience, the more 
 thoughtful Socialists no longer held haughtily aloof from 
 the means at their hand by which they might take part 
 in the work of local government. The old idea of ob- 
 structing reform in order to precipitate revolution did 
 not now hold its place except among a few extremists. 
 Work diredled towards common obje&s began to make 
 the differences on which the party had divided and sub- 
 divided itself fall back into something nearer their true 
 
jet. 60] WILLIAM MORRIS 289 
 
 proportion : and in 1 8 93 efforts began to be made to- 
 wards re-uniting the party. In these efforts Morris 
 cordially joined, though he no longer accepted the position 
 of a leader, or allowed the work he contributed towards 
 this objed to encroach largely on his time and energy. 
 He defined the work to be done as the promotion of 
 common ideals based on the teaching of history. To- 
 wards that objed, he this year carefully revised the series 
 of articles which he had written for the Commonweal 
 between 1886 and 1888, in collaboration with Mr. E. B. 
 Bax, and issued them as a volume under the title of 
 " Socialism, its Growth and Outcome." On the 1st of 
 May — the anniversary which, under the name of Labour 
 Day, it had been sought to constitute as an international 
 festival of the working classes both in Europe and 
 America — he joined with Mr. Hyndman and Mr. G. B. 
 Shaw, as the representatives of the principal associations 
 in England holding Socialist dodrines, in drawing up and 
 issuing a new irenicon under the title of the " Manifesto 
 of English Socialists." In this manifesto the common 
 principles of the movement were once more stated, and 
 a last appeal made towards the sinking of differences and 
 the reinstatement of harmonious working on different 
 methods towards common ends. It is signed by the fif- 
 teen members of a joint Committee which had been 
 appointed for this purpose by the Social Democratic 
 Federation, the Fabian Society, and the Hammersmith 
 Socialist Society, and was issued with the authority of 
 all three bodies. 
 
 The manifesto bears the traces of a joint authorship in 
 which the hand of Mr. Shaw and the inspiration of Mr. 
 Sidney Webb are more plainly visible than those of Morris. 
 But it fairly represents the moderate -and pra&ical views 
 which Morris held in the last years of his life. By a brief 
 review of the fads it is shown that some constructive social 
 
 11. u 
 
2 9 o THE LIFE OF [1893 
 
 theory is absolutely needed. Of these there are really 
 only three. Two of the three must be rejefted: the 
 Feudal or Tory theory, which is incompatible with 
 modern conditions and the fadt of democracy ; and the 
 Manchester or Whig theory, which has completely broken 
 down in practice. The third is Socialism. No amount 
 of moralization of the conditions of a capitalist society 
 based on private property can do away with the necessity 
 for abolishing it, as a step towards the creation of the 
 new social order. Legislative readjustments of industry 
 and administration, while they may be desirable as tem- 
 porary expedients, will not be permanently useful unless 
 the whole state is merged into an organized common- 
 wealth. For the realization of the new order, the whole 
 community must possess complete ownership and control 
 of the means for creating and distributing wealth; it 
 must put an end to the wage-system ; it must sweep awav 
 all distinctions of class, and finally establish national and 
 international Communism. Anarchism, whether as a 
 dodtrine or a system of ta6lics, is formally repudiated in 
 all its forms. The ameliorative measures which, under 
 the heightened sensitiveness of the public conscience, 
 are within the scope of practical politics, are not to be 
 opposed, but supported and welcomed. The more that 
 such measures give, either to individuals or to whole 
 bodies of the working class, of leisure for thought and 
 freedom from anxiety, the more will that working class 
 be able to turn their attention and exert their powers to- 
 wards the introdudion of a new social order based on 
 equality of condition. There is therefore no reason why 
 Socialists should not constitute themselves into a distindt 
 party with definite immediate aims. Among these are 
 mentioned an Eight Hours A61, an adequate minimum 
 or living wage for all working men or women em- 
 ployed either in the Government service or in monopolies 
 
jet. 60] WILLIAM MORRIS 291 
 
 under partial state-control, the suppression of sub-con- 
 tracting and sweating, and universal suffrage. Ten years 
 had elapsed since a theory and a programme not unlike 
 this had induced Morris to join the newly-founded 
 Democratic Federation. The wheel might seem to have 
 come full circle. But the experience, the thought, the 
 labour of ten years had given to all the terms employed, 
 and to all the measures advocated, an enlarged and deep- 
 ened meaning. There had been much disappointment, 
 much disillusion, much wreckage of unverified beliefs 
 and extravagant hopes. The work had been tried by 
 fire and tempest ; over and over again had the super- 
 structure crumbled or been consumed away down to the 
 foundations. But these foundations, such was Morris's 
 permanent conviction, were in the rock, and imperishable. 
 
 Any later expressions of his mind with regard to the 
 immediate duties which lay before Socialists are in com- 
 plete consonance with the manifesto of 1893. One of 
 the most significant of these occurs in an address on Art 
 and Labour which he delivered to the Guild of Litho- 
 graphic Artists in February, 1894. "The new birth of 
 art," he said there, "will be brought about noiselessly, 
 gradually, and without violent change. We already see 
 springing up round us the germs of this new life, the out- 
 ward signs of which are trades-unionism, socialism, and 
 co-operation." Such at least were his reported words. 
 Whether or not he actually employed the singular col- 
 location of the last sentence, the fact remains that Social- 
 ism as a practical movement, though not as an ultimate 
 ideal, had come in his mind to occupy a place alongside 
 of other movements, all of which were incomplete mani- 
 festations of a single spirit. It no longer anathematized 
 whatever lay outside of its own specific body of doCtrine. 
 From extreme intransigeance it had swung back to 
 something approaching opportunism. He that is not 
 
2 9 2 THE LIFE OF [1893 
 
 against us is on our part was rapidly becoming !ts test of 
 orthodoxy. 
 
 Thus the formal organization of a united Socialist 
 party was a matter which, though he was willing to 
 co-operate towards its realization, he did not think of 
 the first importance. On the 25th of October, 1894, he 
 wrote on behalf of the Hammersmith Socialist Society 
 to Mr. R. Blatchford, who had been urging this point 
 in the Clarion newspaper. In that letter he expressed 
 his conviction that the union, if attainable, might and 
 should be effected without any interference with the 
 existing organizations. But he was equally clear that 
 all minor differences among these organizations should be 
 sunk in view of a general assent in the aim of nationalizing 
 the means of production. A declaration of agreement 
 in this aim would, he thought, be sufficient as a test of 
 membership in a united Socialist party. 
 
 It may not be irrelevant to add here the last pronounce- 
 ment on the subject which Morris made before his death. 
 In answer to an American correspondent who had asked 
 whether he had altered his views as to Socialism, he replied 
 on the 9th of January, 1896 : 
 
 CC I have not changed my mind on Socialism. My 
 view on the point of relation between Art and Socialism 
 is as follows : Society (so-called) at present is organized 
 entirely for the benefit of a privileged class; the working 
 class being only considered in the arrangement as so 
 much machinery. This involves perpetual and enormous 
 waste, and the organization for the production of genuine 
 utilities is only a secondary consideration. This waste 
 lands the whole civilized world in a position of artificial 
 poverty, which again debars men of all classes from satis- 
 fying their rational desires. Rich men are in slavery to 
 Philistinism, poor men to penury. We can none of us 
 have what we want, except (partially only) by making 
 
mt. 60] WILLIAM MORRIS 293 
 
 prodigious sacrifices, which very few men can ever do. 
 Before therefore we can so much as hope for any art, 
 we must be free from this artificial poverty. When we 
 are thus free, in my opinion, the natural instincts of 
 mankind toward beauty and incident will take their due 
 place : we shall want art, and since we shall be really 
 wealthy, we shall be able to have what we want." 
 
 But in truth, as Morris well knew, the work of the 
 Socialist party as a separate organization, whether a&ing 
 as a united body or in detached and conflicting fragments, 
 was for the time being already done. While Socialists 
 were busy over their friendly or embittered contests as 
 to methods, the course of events had already decided the 
 question, and the policy of permeation had slowly become 
 not so much an accepted theory as a realized fact. The 
 great lock-out in the English coal industry, which was the 
 most important social event of the autumn and winter 
 months of 1893, came at once as a result and a symbol 
 of a new spirit ; and the ideas that underlay it, now 
 formally expressed in the celebrated phrase of the " liv- 
 ing wage," were the first large outward manifestation of 
 the beginnings of a new order of things, a new theory 
 of human life. Almost for the first time, the cardinal 
 doctrine began to take shape and assume consistence that 
 the industrial and commercial system, no less than the 
 political system of the country, was a means and not an 
 end : and that the true end, for the sake of which alone 
 these systems had any claim to respect or any right to 
 existence, was the well-being of the nation, the humani- 
 zation of human life. Such a humanized life, in which 
 comfort and happiness should be alike within the reach 
 of all, and in which all alike, rich and poor, should share, 
 until the names rich and poor might finally become alike 
 obsolete in a common condition of civic and national 
 well-being, had been from the first what Morris had 
 
294 THE LIFE OF [1893 
 
 striven after. He had joined the Socialist movement as 
 a means, however indirect or uncertain, towards bringing 
 about that end : and neither in the State Socialism of his 
 earlier, nor in the Communal Socialism of his later theory, 
 did he see anything beyond stages towards the birth of a 
 final order. That final order might be described, for 
 want of other terms, as the re-organization of the world 
 under Socialism : but its actual nature, or the actual steps 
 by which it was to be brought about, he perpetually in- 
 sisted that it was impossible to lay out beforehand, or to 
 forecast except by instinctive conjecture, and the imagin- 
 ings of a prophet or a poet. As in Plato, the last words 
 of philosophy were only to be expressed in the terms of 
 a more or less conscious mythology. As in the days of 
 the Hebrew prophets, the practical foundation of a king- 
 dom of God on earth was to be wrought out by aid of 
 that diffused imaginative ardour in which young men 
 should see visions, and old men dream dreams. The 
 visions of his own boyhood, the dreams of his own more 
 advanced age, were but means towards expressing, and 
 influences towards stimulating, the human movement 
 itself, in which, through all doubts and discouragements, 
 he had a permanent and a growing faith. No one in- 
 sisted more strongly than he on the futility of any attempt 
 to organize the future, or to lay down what would actually 
 happen either in the progress towards the new age or in 
 the final epoch of its attainment. In " The Dream of 
 John Ball" he had shadowed out, in an allegorical setting 
 of subtle and intricate beauty, the birth of a new world, 
 seen, for one hour of intense spiritual exaltation, when 
 the mediaeval rebel and mystic and the modern Socialist 
 joined hands over the white poppy-flower in the doubtful 
 dusk between moonset and dawn. In such a vision, the 
 prophetic soul of the world, dreaming on things to come, 
 ranges disembodied and unconfined. The dreams which 
 
jet. 60] WILLIAM MORRIS 295 
 
 the present may have of an elusive or dimly-conjedtured 
 future, no less than those which the past may once have 
 had of a future that is not the present, must be no rational 
 human forecast, but a tale told, like the Vision of Er in 
 Plato's cc Republic/' by one neither alive nor dead. In 
 " News from Nowhere" he had, with a reversion to a 
 simpler and less august sphere of imagination, clothed 
 his own dream of a new age in the innocent draperies of 
 a romantic pastoral. But the dreamer of dreams, the 
 poet and romance-writer who habitually moved in a 
 strange world of his own, was also a man of keen-sighted 
 practical intelligence. When called on for action, he could 
 dismiss all that world of dreams, or only retain from it 
 that deeper insight and that wider outlook which is for- 
 bidden to men not endowed with the more than human 
 gift of imaginative insight. The letter to the Daily 
 Chronicle on the Miners' Question, his last and most pro- 
 found public utterance on the future of human society 
 and the meaning of human life, is the voice of one who 
 had lived both in Plato's cave and in the upper air, and 
 who could adjust his eye to both. From that upper world 
 of ideal art and creative imagination — of real things, as 
 Plato would say — he could turn to the confused and 
 perplexing movement of shadows in the cavern spoken 
 and thought of by men as the actual world, and see break- 
 ing over the darkness no mere fluctuating glow from a 
 fire behind the prisoners, but the glimmer of actual day. 
 
 This letter, headed " The Deeper Meaning of the 
 Struggle," and written on the 9th of November, ran as 
 follows : 
 
 cc May I be allowed to say a word in supplement to 
 your paragraph about my opinion on the future of 
 the fine arts ? You rather imply that I am a pessimist 
 on this matter. This is not the case ; but I am anxious 
 that there should be no illusions as to the future of art. 
 
2 9 6 THE LIFE OF [1893 
 
 I do not believe in the possibility of keeping art vigor- 
 ously alive by the a<5tion, however energetic, of a few 
 groups of specially gifted men and their small circle of 
 admirers amidst a general public incapable of understand- 
 ing and enjoying their work. I hold firmly to the 
 opinion that all worthy schools of art must be in the 
 future, as they have been in the past, the outcome of the 
 aspirations of the people towards the beauty and true 
 pleasure of life. And further, that now that democracy 
 is building up a new order, which is slowly emerging 
 from the confusion of the commercial period, these as- 
 pirations of the people towards beauty can only be born 
 from a condition of practical equality of economical con- 
 dition amongst the whole population. Lastly, I am so 
 confident that this equality will be gained, that I am pre- 
 pared to accept as a consequence of the process of that 
 gain, the seeming disappearance of what art is now left us ; 
 because I am sure that that will be but a temporary loss, 
 to be followed by a genuine new birth of art, which 
 will be the spontaneous expression of the pleasure of life 
 innate in the whole people. 
 
 " This, I say, is the art which I look forward to, not 
 as a vague dream, but as a practical certainty, founded 
 on the general well-being of the people. It is true that 
 the blossom of it I shall not see ; therefore I may be 
 excused if, in common with other artists, I try to express 
 myself through the art of to-day, which seems to us to 
 be only a survival of the organic art of the past, in which 
 the people shared, whatever the other drawbacks of their 
 condition might have been. For the feeling for art in 
 us artists is genuine, though we have to work in the 
 midst of the ignorance of those whose whole life ought 
 to be spent in the production of works of art (the makers 
 of wares to wit) and of the fatuous pretence of those who, 
 making no utilities, are driven to c make-believe.' 
 
jet. 60] WILLIAM MORRIS 297 
 
 u Yet if we shall not (those of us who are as old as I 
 am) see the New Art, the expression of the general 
 pleasure of life, we are even now seeing the seed of it 
 beginning to germinate. For if genuine art be im- 
 possible without the help of the useful classes, how can 
 these turn their attention to it if they are living amidst 
 sordid cares which press upon them day in, day out ? 
 The first step, therefore, towards the new birth of art 
 must be a definite rise in the condition of the workers ; 
 their livelihood must (to say the least of it) be less 
 niggardly and less precarious, and their hours of labour 
 shorter ; and this improvement must be a general one, 
 and confirmed against the chances of the market by legis- 
 lation. But again this change for the better can only 
 be realized by the efforts of the workers themselves. 
 4 By us, and not for us,' must be their motto. That 
 they are now finding this out for themselves and afting 
 on it makes this year a memorable one indeed, small as 
 is the adtual gain which they are claiming. So I not 
 only 4 admit,' but joyfully insist on the fa6t c that the 
 miners are laying the foundation of something better.' 
 The struggle against the terrible power of the profit- 
 grinder is now practically proclaimed by them a matter 
 of principle, and no longer a mere chance-hap business 
 dispute, and though the importance of this is acknow- 
 ledged here and there, I think it is even yet underrated. 
 For my part I look upon the swift progress towards 
 equality as now certain ; what these staunch miners have 
 been doing in the face of such tremendous odds, other 
 workmen can and will do; and when life is easier and 
 fuller of pleasure, people will have time to look around 
 them and find out what they desire in the matter of art, 
 and will also have power to compass their desires. No 
 one can tell now what form that art will take ; but as it 
 is certain that it will not depend on the whim of a few 
 
298 THE LIFE OF WILLIAM MORRIS [1893 
 
 persons, but on the will of all, so it may be hoped that 
 it will at last not lag behind that of past ages, but will 
 outgo the art of the past in the degree that life will be 
 more pleasurable from the absence of bygone violence 
 and tyranny, in spite and not because of which our fore- 
 fathers produced the wonders of popular art, some few 
 of which time has left us." 
 
CHAPTER XXI 
 
 LAST YEARS*. THE KELMSCOTT CHAUCER 
 1894-1896 
 
 For about a year from the date of this remarkable letter 
 Morris's life was so quietly busy from day to day that 
 it has left almost no noticeable records. At the end of 
 1893 he had written to his mother the last letter of the 
 long series which begins when he was an undergraduate 
 at Oxford. 
 
 "Kelmscott House, 
 
 "Dec. 23rd, 1893. 
 
 " My dearest Mother, 
 
 " If I do not write now I shall not be in time for 
 Christmas Day, so please consider this as Christmas Eve. 
 I asked Henny to get you some pocket-handkerchiefs 
 when she was in town. I hope you found them nice. 
 The weather here is very fine this morning ; I hope the 
 sun is shining in on your room as it is on mine, as I 
 suppose it is, for I think they both look nearly south. 
 Jenny (the younger) is sitting with me reading a paper, 
 and we are both enjoying the fine day. 
 
 " I got a letter from Henny yesterday inclosing a nice 
 neck-kerchief for me ; that will be good for me to wear 
 when the weather takes one of the sudden changes to 
 cold, which come so often now. Thank you very much 
 for it. 
 
 c< Also, dearest mother, thank you very much for the 
 handsome stands and dishes you were so kind as to send 
 
3 oo THE LIFE OF [1894 
 
 me; and the beautiful Dresden cups which I have always 
 so much admired. And they are so pleasant to drink 
 out of. 
 
 "We are all very well at present, and have pretty much 
 got over our colds. I am looking forward to this 
 Christmas as a quiet time, when there will be a lull in 
 business matters : as I am hard at work, which I like 
 very much. 
 
 u Dearest own mother, I send you my very best love 
 and am 
 
 " Your most affectionate son, 
 
 u William Morris." 
 
 Mrs. Morris died in the following winter in her 
 ninetieth year. u Tuesday I went to bury my mother/" 
 he wrote a few days afterwards : " a pleasant winter day 
 with gleams of sun. She was laid in earth in the church- 
 yard close by the house, a very pretty place among the 
 great wych-elms, which, if it were of no use to her, was 
 softening to us. Altogether my old and callous heart 
 was touched by the absence of what had been so kind to 
 me and fond of me. She was eighty-nine, and had been 
 ill for nearly four years/' 
 
 All that year Morris had been working hard at his 
 press. But at Whitsuntide he took a holiday, and spent 
 it in his favourite haunts of Northern France. He re- 
 newed there his delight in the indestruftibly beautiful 
 country, and the still lovely towns which seem as if they 
 had grown out of the country like the fruit on a tree. 
 The spring, too, was one of exceptional beauty ; the 
 countryside was one flame of flowers, and cc the nightin- 
 gales," as Morris put it to Burne- Jones after he came 
 back, cc O my wig, they were peppering into it." The 
 effedt of the visit may be clearly traced in an address 
 which he gave, soon after his return to England, to the 
 
jet. 6 1] WILLIAM MORRIS 301 
 
 Ancoats Brotherhood at Manchester. The subjed he 
 chose to speak upon was " Town and Country." The 
 greater part of the address was delivered without notes, 
 and of that portion no trustworthy record has been pre- 
 served. But for the earlier portion a few pages of manu- 
 script had been carefully written out : and the fragment 
 is notable for the clearness of its historical view, and for 
 the temperate pradical ideal, which, not without reason- 
 able hope, it sets up for a near future. It has also a 
 dired autobiographic value from its personal touches, 
 not only in the allusion to the Oxford of his own youth, 
 but where he speaks of the havoc wrought in country 
 villages by the wasteful negled, or still worse by the de- 
 strudive attention, of the modern landowner. In both 
 cases he had in his mind adual instances in his own 
 neighbourhood on the upper Thames. But beyond all, 
 it sums up, with the ripeness of long experience, the 
 instinds and beliefs which guided him in his view of 
 what kind of human life was desirable, and possible, and 
 a duty, in a naturally beautiful world. 
 
 cc Town and country are generally put in a kind of 
 contrast, but we will see what kind of a contrast there 
 lias been, is, and may be between them ; how far that 
 contrast is desirable or necessary, or whether it may not 
 be possible in the long run to make the town a part of 
 the country and the country a part of the towns. I 
 think I may assume that, on the one hand, there is no- 
 body here so abnormally made as not to take a pleasure 
 in green fields, and trees, and rivers, and mountains, the 
 beings, human and otherwise, that inhabit those scenes, 
 and in a word, the general beauty and incident of nature : 
 and that, on the other, we all of us find human inter- 
 course necessary to us, and even the excitement of those 
 forms of it which can only be had where large bodies of 
 men live together. 
 
3 o2 THE LIFE OF [1894 
 
 " In the Roman times of the Empire, when the lands 
 were cultivated almost wholly by well-organized slave 
 labour with its necessary concomitant of brigandage and 
 piracy in out-of-the-way places, I can't think that the 
 countrysides were very pleasant places to live in ; whereas 
 the Roman city with its handsome buildings and gar- 
 dens, its public baths, and other institutions of almost 
 complete c municipal socialism/ must have been very 
 pleasant to well-to-do people, and perhaps, under the 
 Empire at least, not quite intolerable to the proletarian, 
 whose form of pauper relief did not include the prison 
 system of the modern workhouse. In those days the 
 town decidedly c scores 9 ; all the more as manufacture 
 was, as its name implies, wholly a matter of handicraft. 
 But the Roman city-system was pretty much swept away 
 by the barbarism which took the place of the Empire. 
 In this country, and wherever the people were not com- 
 pletely Romanized, the town was almost always merely 
 the development of the agricultural district ; it was the 
 aggregation of the cultivators of the soil, and its free- 
 men were always landowners, though mostly collective 
 ones. In fact, for a long time after the Teutonic in- 
 vasion which made this country England, there were no 
 towns at all : the English clans lived in scattered home- 
 steads along the side of the sea, or some river, or in 
 clearings of the wild wood, as their Anglish, Jutish, or 
 Saxon forefathers had done, and when they took a 
 Romano-British town they had nothing better to do 
 with it than to burn it and let it be : though, when they 
 got more civilized, the long extinct glories of Rome took 
 some revenge for this destruction, by the impression 
 which they made on the descendants of the destroyers : 
 e.g., an Anglo-Saxon poet of about the time of Athel- 
 stane wrote a poem on the ruins of an old Roman city 
 which is as pathetic and beautiful as any lyric extant in 
 
jet. 61] WILLIAM MORRIS 303 
 
 any language, and you may, if you please, look on it as 
 a forecast of the glories of the cities that were yet to 
 come. 
 
 u Gradually, as civilization grew, the population thick- 
 ened in certain places where the protection of the feudal 
 lord — Baron, Bishop, or Abbot — made a market pos- 
 sible ; and in short the growth of such places made our 
 mediaeval towns ; though, as was like to be, where an 
 old Roman town like York or London was still in exist- 
 ence, it was used as such a centre. But doubtless our 
 mediaeval towns were very small, smaller than our ima- 
 gination of them pictures them to us ; while on the 
 other hand, the country villages were in many cases 
 much larger than they are now. In fad: in those days 
 it was not so much the houses that made the town, as 
 the constitution, the freemen and the guilds, which 
 gradually grew into the Corporation. My familiarity 
 with Oxford makes it easy to me to see a mediaeval 
 town of the more important kind : a place of some ex- 
 tent within its ancient walls, but the houses much broken 
 by gardens and open spaces within the walls, and with- 
 out them, a small estate it may be called, the communal 
 property of the freemen. On the whole, then, the towns 
 of the Middle Ages, in this country at least, were a part 
 of the countrysides where they stood. 
 
 "In the Middle Ages even London was no more of a 
 centre than Bristol or York, or indeed other places now 
 become almost extinct. But in the eighteenth century 
 London was become very decidedly the centre of Eng- 
 land, and now the distinction was not between the towns 
 and the countrysides, but between London and the rest 
 of the country, towns and all. And here properly begins 
 the opposition of town to country. The only further 
 development of this was the work of the Great Industries 
 which created the big manufacturing town, a thing so 
 
3 04 THE LIFE OF [1894 
 
 entirely modern that even London, with all its enormity, 
 has more relation to the cities of the past than these 
 manufacturing towns have. 
 
 " On considering further the contrast between town 
 and country we must be careful not to forget this special 
 quality in London. For now we see that we have three 
 things to deal with : London, the external beastliness 
 and sordidness of which is in some degree compensated 
 by its intellectual life; the commercial centres, which 
 have no such compensation, and even in externals are 
 far more horrible than London; and the country, which, 
 instead of being the due fellow and helpmate of the 
 towns and the Town, is a troublesome appendage, an 
 awkward incident of town life, which, commercial or in- 
 tellectual, is the real life of our epoch. 
 
 c< The result of all this is the usual make-shift jumble 
 which oppresses all our life in this epoch of strange and 
 rapid change, when we have fallen into such grievous 
 want of reasonable organization. Even London, though 
 far better than the commercial towns, is sordidly vulgar 
 in its rich quarters, noisome and squalid beyond word in 
 its poor quarters. And the country — at this end of 
 May I am not going to say that it is not beautiful — 
 beautiful everywhere more or less where there are not 
 many modern houses in sight. But I know the country 
 well: and even for a rich man, a well-to-do one at 
 least, it shares in the make-shift stupidity of the epoch. 
 Amongst all the superabundant beauty of leaf and flower, 
 all the wealth of meadow, and acre, and hillside, it is 
 stingy, O so stingy ! In an ordinary way not an hour's 
 work will be spent in taking away an ugly dead tree, in 
 mending a shattered wall, setting a tottering vane straight 
 (even if it be pulling down the roof-beam it is fastened 
 to), in short in mending any defacement caused by wind 
 and weather. Not a moment's consideration will be 
 
jet. 61] WILLIAM MORRIS 305 
 
 given as to whether the sightly material shall be used, if 
 the unsightly one be a fradion cheaper for the time 
 being. You can scarce have milk unless you keep a 
 cow : you can't have vegetables unless you grow them 
 yourself. I say this is the ordinary rule : it is true that 
 when there is a rich squire, he does sometimes take some 
 pains in beautifying his cottages, restoring his church, 
 and so forth — with the result in all cases, that the village 
 he has so dealt with has become as vulgar as Bayswater. 
 Nor can I leave this subjedt of the outward asped of 
 the country without reminding you that through forty 
 years of my life I have diligently and affectionately 
 noticed the countryside in its smallest detail, and that 
 the change for the worse in its aspedt has been steady, 
 and, especially within the last twenty years, startlingly 
 rapid. Indeed, sometimes I feel selfishly glad to think 
 that I shall not live to see the worst of it. Now you 
 may well say that all this suffering to men who are in 
 the habit of taking in impressions through the eyes is 
 a due reward for our living on other people's earnings ; 
 for our suffering the human live-stock of the country 
 to live such a wretched scanty existence as they do. 
 True, and over true ; but then why should we of the 
 nineteenth century be so extra punished, when our fore- 
 fathers were involved in the same sin i 
 
 a I take it that after all this is the case, that we feel it 
 because it is at last tending to change — that we at last 
 can do something to alter it. For this is what I want 
 done in this matter of town and country: I want neither 
 the towns to be appendages of the country, nor the 
 country of the town ; I want the town to be impregnated 
 with the beauty of the country, and the country with 
 the intelligence and vivid life of the town. I want every 
 homestead to be clean, orderly, and tidy; a lovely house 
 surrounded by acres and acres of garden. On the other 
 
 II. x 
 
3 o6 THE LIFE OF [1894 
 
 hand, I want the town to be clean, orderly, and tidy; in 
 short, a garden with beautiful houses in it. Clearly, if 
 I don't wish this, I must be a fool or a dullard ; but I 
 do more — I claim it as the due heritage of the latter 
 ages of the world which have subdued nature, and can 
 have for the asking/' 
 
 The great work of the Kelmscott Chaucer, which had 
 been so long in preparation, was now fairly begun. 
 " Chaucer getting on well ; such lovely designs," is a 
 note made by him in early spring. At the end of June 
 he writes that he hopes to begin the aftual printing within 
 a month, and that, in about three months more, all the 
 pictures, and nearly all the borders, will be ready for the 
 whole of the Canterbury Tales. His delight in the 
 growing row of volumes from his own press was un- 
 abated ; and almost as great was his delight in giving 
 copies to his more intimate friends. To Mr. Philip 
 Webb, who had made some remonstrance against the 
 extent of his generosity, he replied in the following 
 letter: 
 
 " Kelmscott House, 
 
 " August 27th, '94. 
 
 " My dear Fellow, 
 
 CC A traveller once entered a western hotel in 
 America and went up to the clerk in his box (as the 
 custom is in that country) and ordered chicken for his 
 dinner : the clerk, without any trouble in his face, put 
 his hand into his desk, and drew out a derringer, where- 
 with he covered the newcomer and said in a calm historic 
 voice: Stranger, you will not have chicken, you will have 
 hash. 
 
 " This story you seem to have forgotten. So I will 
 apply it, and say that you will have the Kelmscott books 
 as they come out. In short you will have hash because 
 
jet. 61] WILLIAM MORRIS 307 
 
 it would upset me very much if you did not have a 
 share in my ' larx.' 
 
 " As to the Olaf Saga, I had forgotten what you had 
 had ; chiefly I think because I did not prize the big-paper 
 copies much. They were done in the days of ignorance, 
 before the Kelmscott Press was, though hard on the 
 time when it began. 
 
 <c You see as to all these matters I do the books 
 mainly for you and one or two others ; the public does 
 not really care about them a damn — which is stale. But 
 I tell you I want you to have them, and finally you shall. 
 
 " Yours affe&ionately, 
 
 "William Morris." 
 
 The autumn at Kelmscott was unusually quiet and 
 happy. A certain degree of physical feebleness had now 
 become his normal condition ; he was seldom able to take 
 long walks, or to spend whole days fishing ; but he 
 delighted in driving among the beautiful and familiar 
 villages, and in shorter walks near home. It was on 
 one of these walks, at the end of September, that when 
 his companions perched on a gate to rest he sat down on 
 the roadside with his legs straight out in front of him, 
 saying, <c I shall sit on the world." It would be difficult 
 to convey to any one who did not know him well the 
 sense of mingled oddness and pathos that the words gave. 
 Two days later, on a Sunday morning in Buscot Wood, 
 he talked for some two hours on end on the principles 
 of conducting business, with all his old keen insight and 
 fertility of illustration. It was noticeable how he seemed 
 to speak of the whole matter as, for himself, a past ex- 
 perience. One of the visitors at Kelmscott that week 
 was Sir Edward Burne-Jones's little grandson, in whose 
 favour Morris discarded any prejudices which he might 
 have against children other than his own ; for outside of 
 
308 THE LIFE OF [1895 
 
 his own family he was not a lover of children, and seldom 
 took any notice of them. "As to Denis, he is the 
 dearest little chap," he writes on the 3rd of Oftober, 
 " and as merry as the day is long — all that a gentleman 
 of his age should be: everybody paid him the attention 
 which he deserves." The Kelmscott holiday — during 
 which, however, he was steadily at work designing borders 
 and initials for the Chaucer — was prolonged till the be- 
 ginning of November. 
 
 Soon after he returned to London the first eledtions 
 were being held under the Local Government A6fc of 
 1894, which had been the latest and the most important 
 achievement of Mr. Gladstone's administration. Morris 
 was at once too preoccupied with his own work, and too 
 disillusioned by his own experience, to feel any very deep 
 interest in the matter. He did not go to Kelmscott to 
 attend the inaugural parish meeting : in London he voted, 
 but did no more. It was claimed for the Aft by some 
 enthusiasts that it reconstituted a framework of adminis- 
 tration which was essentially that of the Middle Ages, 
 and indeed went back in some points even beyond them. 
 But to him it seemed too artificial, and too much en- 
 cumbered with those checks and balances which he hated, 
 to be a source of any great hope. To Lady Burne- Jones, 
 who was standing for election to the Parish Council at 
 Rottingdean, he wrote on the 14th of December : 
 
 " Well now, I hope you will come in at the head of 
 the poll ; and I hope we shall beat our Bumbles. No 
 one here can even guess how it will go. I daresay you 
 think me rather lukewarm about the affair ; but I am so 
 depressed with the pettiness and timidity of the bill and 
 the checks and counterchecks with which such an obvious 
 measure has been hedged about, that all I can hope is 
 that people will be able to keep up the excitement about 
 it till they have got it altered somewhat. However, I 
 
jet. 61 J WILLIAM MORRIS 309 
 
 shall go and vote for my twelve to-morrow morning, but 
 I am lethargic and faint-hearted." 
 
 A week later he wrote again : <f Many thanks for your 
 book " — a brief, but admirably lucid printed address to 
 the ele&ors, explaining the scope of the A6t and the 
 nature of their rights and duties under it — "which is 
 as good as the subjeft admits of, and for the first time 
 makes me know something about the parish councils. 
 Could you let me have two or three more ? Now I 
 congratulate you on the ele&ion, and I am really quite 
 pleased that you beat the Bumbles. Here they beat us 
 properly ; though I didn't think, all things considered, 
 that it was so bad, as we polled about half of what they 
 did. You see all through London the middle class voted 
 solid against us ; which I think extremely stupid of them, 
 as they might as well have got credit for supporting an 
 improved administration. But you see they have an 
 instindt, which they can't resist, against any progress in 
 any direction. Item, they are very fearful lest the rates 
 should be raised on them ; as they certainly will be, who- 
 ever is in. We did better with the Guardians' election, 
 getting eight out of twelve." 
 
 At the beginning of 1895 Morris was carrying on all 
 his multifarious occupations with unimpaired a&ivity. 
 Two presses were at work upon the Chaucer, and a third 
 on smaller books. He was designing new paper-hang- 
 ings; he was going on daily with the writing of new 
 romances; he was completing, in collaboration with Mr. 
 Magnusson, the translation of the Heimskringla which 
 they had begun some three and twenty years before, and 
 seeing it through the press for the Saga Library; and 
 he was busily increasing the colleftion of illuminated 
 manuscripts, chiefly of the thirteenth and fourteenth 
 centuries, which towards the end of his life became 
 his chief treasures and gave him extraordinary delight. 
 
310 THE LIFE OF [1895 
 
 With the two presses at work it now seemed possible to 
 finish the Chaucer in a year, and the panics into which 
 he sometimes fell over its slow progress were greatly 
 allayed. Among the smaller books which the third 
 printing-press was turning out was the volume of seledted 
 poems of Coleridge. As to that book the following 
 interesting passage occurs in a letter to Ellis when the 
 contents were under discussion : 
 
 cc As to the Coleridge-Keats question, you don't quite 
 understand the position I think. Keats was a great poet 
 who sometimes nodded : we don't want to make a selec- 
 tion of his works. Coleridge was a muddle-brained 
 metaphysician, who by some strange freak of fortune 
 turned out a few real poems amongst the dreary flood 
 of inanity which was his wont. It is these real poems 
 only that must be seledted, or we burden the world with 
 another useless book. Christabel only just comes in 
 because the detail is fine ; but nothing a hair's breadth 
 worse must be admitted. There is absolutely no diffi- 
 culty in choosing, because the difference between his 
 poetry and his drivel is so striking. 
 
 fc I have been through the poems, and find that the 
 only ones that have any interest for me are — 1. Ancient 
 Mariner, 2. Christabel, 3. Kubla Khan, and 4. the 
 poem called Love. This would make a very little book, 
 about 60 pages. There is one other which at least has 
 some chara&er, though rather tainted with Words- 
 worthianism ; it is called The Three Graves, and is 
 about as cheerful as the influenza. But then it is copy- 
 right ; and at the best it would rather water down the 
 good ones." 
 
 This volume, which finally included thirteen of 
 Coleridge's poems, was the last of the series of reprints 
 of modern poetry issued from the Kelmscott Press. It 
 was not printed till a year later, having been postponed 
 
jet. 61] WILLIAM MORRIS 311 
 
 to another volume of seledted poems of Herrick, for 
 whom Morris had only a modified liking. " I like him 
 better than I thought I should : I daresay we shall make 
 a pretty book of it/* was all he would say after looking 
 through the "Hesperides" and "Noble Numbers" when 
 the Kelmscott edition was in preparation. 
 
 In March he was buying manuscripts of Messrs. 
 Quaritch and Leighton, and also at sales at Sotheby's 
 and Christie's, and hungering after more, though indig- 
 nant at the prices which were asked for them. " I 
 bought," he writes to Ellis on the 19th, " for £15 10s. 
 (much too dear) a Guldin Bibel (Augsburg, Hohen- 
 wang, circa 1470), a very interesting book which I 
 much wanted. Also I bought for £25 (much too dear) 
 a handsome 13th century French MS., but with little 
 ornament, because it looked so handsome I hadn't the 
 heart to send it back. The Mentelin Bible Quaritch 
 bought for himself : 'tis a very fine book, and I lust after 
 it, but can't afford it. The prices were preposterous. 
 There is a sale at Sotheby's this week, and I am just 
 going up there, though I don't expedl much in my way. 
 I expeft to meet Mr. James there with the two leaves 
 from the Fitzwilliam." 
 
 On the 23rd he continues : " As the history of sales 
 seems to interest you, hear a tale of the Phillips sale, of 
 which to-day is the third day. Two books I bid for. 
 A 13th century Aristotelian book with three very pretty 
 initials, but imperfedl top and tail; I put £15 on this 
 with many misgivings as to my folly — hi ! it fetched 
 £50 ! ! A really pretty little book, Gregory's Decretals, 
 with four or five very tiny illuminations ; I took a fancy 
 to it and put £40 on it, expedting to get it for ^25 — 
 ho ! ! it fetched £96 III Rejoice with me that I have 
 got 82 MSS., as clearly I shall never get another. I 
 have duly got my two leaves, and beauties they are." 
 
312 THE LIFE OF [1895 
 
 The two leaves mentioned in these letters have an 
 interesting history attached to them. In the previous 
 July Morris had bought for upwards of £400 — the 
 highest price he had ever then paid for a book — an 
 English Book of Hours written about 1300 in East 
 Anglia, and containing the arms of Grey and Clifford. 
 It was subsequently found that two missing leaves from 
 this manuscript were in the Fitzwilliam Museum at 
 Cambridge. After long negotiations, it was agreed that 
 Morris should sell his book to the museum for £200, 
 and in return have the possession of it and of the two 
 leaves belonging to it for his own lifetime. He had the 
 leaves inserted in their places, and the manuscript re- 
 mained one of his chief treasures. After his death it 
 went to Cambridge, where it is now. 
 
 Notwithstanding the great rise in prices, a fine painted 
 book was always worth more to Morris than it cost : and 
 within the next two months he had added two of the 
 first rank to his colle&ion. One of these was the so- 
 called Huntingfield Psalter, a superb book of the end of 
 the twelfth century. The other was the Tiptoft Missal, 
 a work of the early fourteenth century, with illuminated 
 borders throughout, of which the best are of unsur- 
 passed beauty. 
 
 At the beginning of April he went down to Kelms- 
 cott. The Manor House, of which his tenure had 
 hitherto been precarious, had, by an arrangement made 
 the month before, passed pra&ically, though not form- 
 ally, into his ownership. 
 
 c< It is just a month,'' he wrote to his daughter on his 
 arrival, s€ since I was here, and there is a great change 
 in the grass, which shows green everywhere and looks 
 beautiful. As to the flowers, there are not many of 
 them a&ually out. The snowdrops nearly but not quite 
 gone ; a few purple crocuses, but of course not open this 
 
jet. 62] WILLIAM MORRIS 313 
 
 sunless day. The daphne very full of blossom. Many 
 daffodils nearly out, but only two or three quite. The 
 beautiful hepatica, which I used to love so when I was 
 a quite little boy, in full bloom, both pink and blue : 
 the hyacinths not out yet, but more advanced than our 
 London (outdoor) ones. Several of the crown imperials 
 show for bloom ; but are not due yet, nor are the yellow 
 tulips. There are a few primroses, but not many ; but 
 the garden with all its springing green looks lovely. 
 
 cc As to birds, I have heard very little singing except 
 the rooks, who are all agog : I suppose the cold weather 
 has belated the breeding season. 
 
 " Giles has patched up the punt, and is sanguine about 
 its holding water : so am I ; but think the water may be 
 rather inside than out — however we shall see. There 
 has been a little flood since I was here ; which will do 
 good. The house is as clean as a new pin." 
 
 By the end of the month he had cleared off long 
 arrears of translation and romance-writing by finishing 
 his Heimskringla and the romance of (c The Water of 
 the Wondrous Isles," and was working harder than ever 
 for the Society for Protection of Ancient Buildings. 
 The main obje6t of their defence at the moment was 
 Peterborough Cathedral. 
 
 It was one of the churches which had been his earliest 
 admirations ; he had known it in his boyhood, and felt 
 towards it as though he had been one of its own builders. 
 One of the most brilliant pieces of imaginative description 
 in <c The Earthly Paradise " is put in the mouth of a wan- 
 derer who had seen that magnificent western front rising. 
 It occurs in the introductory verses to the tale of " The 
 Proud King." 
 
 — I, who have seen 
 So many lands, and midst such marvels been, 
 Clearer than these abodes of outland men 
 
3 i 4 THE LIFE OF [1895 
 
 Can see above the green and unburnt fen 
 The little houses of an English town, 
 Cross-timbered, thatched with fen-reeds coarse and 
 brown, 
 
 And high o'er these, three gables, great and fair, 
 That slender rods of columns do upbear 
 Over the minster doors, and imagery 
 Of kings, and flowers no summer field doth see, 
 Wrought on those gables. Yea, I heard withal 
 In the fresh morning air, the trowels fall 
 Upon the stone, a thin noise far away ; 
 For high up wrought the masons on that day, 
 Since to the monks that house seemed scarcely well 
 Till they had set a spire or pinnacle 
 Each side the great porch. ... I am now grown 
 old, 
 
 Yet is it still the tale I then heard told 
 Within the guest-house of that minster-close 
 Whose walls, like cliffs new-made, before us rose. 
 
 A long and bitter controversy was carried on between 
 the Dean and Chapter on one side and the Society for 
 Protection of Ancient Buildings on the other. It ended 
 inconclusively ; and the work proposed by Mr. Pearson 
 has in the main been carried out. But here as elsewhere 
 the real result of the Society's adion is to be sought, not 
 so much in what they failed to prevent, as in the effeft 
 which their vigilant and jealous criticism had on the 
 manner in which the work was carried out. 
 
 Equally strong was Morris's feeling in another matter 
 on which that same spring he helped to excite public 
 interest, that of the injuries done to Epping Forest, the 
 playground of his own childhood, by the Conservators. 
 Alarm had been aroused by the amount of " restoration" 
 that had been carried out in it for some years by lopping 
 
jet. 62] WILLIAM MORRIS 315 
 
 and felling, as well as by changes which smoothed down 
 the characteristic wildness of the Forest. The strangely 
 romantic aspedt of the dense hornbeam thickets, the 
 plashy dells, and the rough cattle-tracks winding among 
 the hollies and beeches of the upper ground, had been 
 already impaired and was in further danger : and Morris 
 was roused to alarm and indignation by the prosped of 
 seeing one of the last fragments of ancient England 
 turned into a modern park. On the 7th of May he 
 spent a long day in walking through the Forest with a 
 party of four or five friends. He was relieved to find 
 that the evil had been exaggerated. Here and there 
 damage had undoubtedly been done ; but whole tra&s 
 of the Forest remained as wild and beautiful as ever ; 
 and he drew little but pleasure from the visit to the 
 glades and coppices, every yard of which had been familiar 
 to him as a boy. 
 
 His anxieties about the Kelmscott Chaucer were not 
 yet over. At the end of May the discovery was made 
 that a number of the printed sheets had become dis- 
 coloured, owing to some failure in the exaft preparation 
 of the ink. Fortunately it proved that the yellow stain 
 was fugitive, and could be removed by careful bleaching 
 in sunlight without affedting the colour of the ink. But 
 it was not till late in the autumn that he could fully 
 satisfy himself that the stain had been permanently re- 
 moved, and might not reappear. 
 
 " The check of the Chaucer flattens life for me some- 
 what," he writes on the 19th of July, "but I am going 
 hard into the matter, and have found out the real expert 
 in the matter of inks and oils, and in about a fortnight 
 hope to know the worst of it. 
 
 " On Wednesday I went a journey into Suffolk for 
 the S. P. A. B., a pretty journey all through my native 
 Essex. The upland pastures were all burnt up, and 
 
316 THE LIFE OF [1895 
 
 were cocoa-nut matting ; but the corn did not look bad : 
 they were cutting oats in many places, which should not 
 be ready till the end of August. Blythborough was 
 what we went to see ; once a good town in the Middle 
 Ages, now a poor remnant of a village with the ruins of a 
 small religious house and a huge 1 5th century church built 
 of flint after that country manner : a very beautiful 
 church, full of interest, with fine wood-work galore, a 
 lovely painted roof, and some stained glass ; the restora- 
 tions not much noticeable from the inside : floor of 
 various bricks, a few seats in the nave, all ancient, similar 
 ones in the chancel, and the rest open space. We were 
 cumbered of course with the parson, since we came to 
 advise him, but I much enjoyed myself and sat about 
 while Turner did his measurings, etc The place is close 
 to Southwold on the little tidal river Bly at the end of 
 the marshland valley, where they were busy with their 
 second hay crop. Little spits of the sandy low upland 
 covered with heather and bracken run down to the marsh, 
 and make a strange landscape of it ; a mournful place, 
 but full of character. I was there some twenty-five years 
 ago ; and found I remembered it perfedtly. 
 
 " By the way, there was a review of the Wood " — his 
 romance of cc The Wood beyond the World," which had 
 been issued from the Kelmscott Press the year before, 
 and of which an ordinary edition had recently been pub- 
 lished — f c in last week's Spectator, which was kind and 
 polite, but amused me very much by assuming that it 
 was a Socialist allegory of Capital and Labour ! It was 
 written with such an air of cock-certainty that I thought 
 people might think that I had told the reviewer myself ; 
 so I wrote a note to explain that he was wrong." 
 
 During this summer the gradual failure of Morris's 
 strength became clearly noticeable. Languor insensibly 
 stole over him. " It is sad," Sir Edward Burne-Jones 
 
jet. 62] WILLIAM MORRIS 317 
 
 wrote in autumn, <c to see his enormous vitality diminish- 
 ing." He was less ready for any adlive expeditions, and 
 began to suffer from sleeplessness. In summer morn- 
 ings it had long been a luxury with him to be awakened 
 at dawn by the first birds and then fall asleep again ; but 
 now that first waking was not always succeeded by a 
 second sleep, and he often, even when summer passed 
 into winter, got up at three or four o'clock and sat down 
 to write at one of his prose tales in order to pass the 
 time. He found that the clipping of a yew dragon 
 which had been for some years in progress under the 
 gable of the tapestry-room at Kelmscott was too fatiguing 
 a task for him. His country walks became shorter in 
 their range, and fishing was almost given up. " Ellis 
 was with us for three days," he writes at the beginning 
 of August, " and took me fishing every day : I did not 
 much want to go, but I daresay it did me good." Even 
 writing began to be a fatiguing task. u I am worn 
 out," he says on the 13th of August, "with writing a 
 long letter to the Athenaeum about the tapestry at South 
 Kensington Museum, and so cannot attempt to fill up 
 this sheet." A week later, however, he was well enough 
 to make his annual expedition to the White Horse. Lady 
 Burne-Jones, who was staying at Kelmscott, was of the 
 party. " Topsy looks very happy, and is so sweet down 
 here," she wrote home. " The garden is enchanting 
 with flowers, one mass of them, and all kept in beautiful 
 order. The trees and bushes are of course grown in the 
 last nine years, and the whole place is leafier ; otherwise 
 I feel as if I had been here last week, the place is so little 
 changed — -but I feel the added years in Janey and Topsy 
 and me, so that it seems like visiting something that is 
 not quite real." 
 
 " The garden looks rich and pleasant," Morris him- 
 self had written at the beginning of the month, "though 
 
318 THE LIFE OF [1895 
 
 the autumn flowers (for we are pra&ically in autumn 
 now) are so much less delightful than those of spring 
 and early summer. One pleasant walk is cut off from 
 us at present, the one up to Buscot Wood. It is guarded 
 by a dragon; i.e., a savage Bull; we (Jenny and I) on 
 Friday last were just going into the first Berkshire field 
 when the lock-keeper stopped us and told us awesome 
 stories about the said beast ; so we abstained. We, safe 
 on the other side of the river, saw the gentleman after- 
 wards, as he walked away from his harem, sometimes 
 throwing up his head and bellowing, sometimes faring 
 along with that expressive half inward growl, which is 
 so interesting to hear when you are on the other side of 
 the Thames. We were both of us compelled to admit 
 that he was a gallant-looking neat — red-roan of colour." 
 
 The lock-keeper's cottage, a pretty but tumble-down 
 building of grey stone, walls and roof, was about to be 
 rebuilt by the Thames Conservancy ; and one of the last 
 instances in which Morris was able to ward off encroach- 
 ments on the beauty of the riverside was when he now 
 prevented, by a temperate and dignified expostulation, 
 the replacement of the old silver-grey roof which lay in 
 sight of his own house by one of blue Welsh slate. At 
 his urgent instances, too, the Conservators consented to 
 give instructions that the men who cut the weeds on the 
 river should spare the flowering plants on the banks as 
 much as possible. But beyond his own immediate reach 
 he had to confess with despondency that it seemed use- 
 less to struggle against the pervading flood of evil 
 change in that lovely region. <c I was thinking just now," 
 he writes from Kelmscott at the end of August, <c how 
 I have wasted the many times when I have been ' hurt ' 
 and (especially of late years) have made no sign, but 
 swallowed down my sorrow and anger, and nothing done! 
 Whereas if I had but gone to bed and stayed there for 
 
jet. 62] WILLIAM MORRIS 319 
 
 a month or two and declined taking any part in life, as 
 indeed on such occasions I have felt very much dis- 
 inclined to do, I can't help thinking that it might have 
 been very effective. Perhaps you remember that this 
 game was tried by some of my Icelandic heroes, and 
 seemingly with great success. But I admit that it wants 
 to be done well. 
 
 c< It was a most lovely afternoon when I came down 
 here, and I was prepared to enjoy the journey from 
 Oxford to Lechlade very much : and so I did ; but 
 woe's me! when we passed by the once lovely little 
 garth near Black Bourton, I saw all my worst fears 
 realized ; for there was the little barn we saw being 
 mended, the wall cut down and finished with a zinked 
 iron roof. It quite sickened me when I saw it. That 's 
 the way all things are going now. In twenty years 
 everything will be gone in this countryside, which twenty 
 years ago was so rich in beautiful building : and we can 
 do nothing to help it or mend it. The world had better 
 say, c Let us be through with it and see what will come 
 after it ! 9 In the meantime I can do nothing but a 
 little bit of Anti-Scrape — sweet to eye while seen. Now 
 that I am grown old and see that nothing is to be done, 
 I half wish that I had not been born with a sense of 
 romance and beauty in this accursed age." 
 
 But a week afterwards he had so far rallied from this 
 fit of depression as to be in great excitement over the 
 new scheme for the folio edition of his own " Sigurd 
 the Volsung," for which Burne-Jones had just agreed to 
 design at least five and twenty pictures. " I am afire to see 
 the new designs," he wrote to Burne-Jones, "which I have 
 no doubt will do — and as to the age, that be blowed ! " 
 
 During the winter he still went on lecturing from 
 time to time as his strength allowed. On the 30th of 
 Odober, at the request of Mr. Hines, a Radical and 
 
320 THE LIFE OF [1895 
 
 Socialist chimney-sweep in Oxford, with whom he had 
 a long-standing acquaintance, dating from the early 
 days of the Socialist movement, he gave an address to 
 inaugurate the newly-founded Oxford Socialist Union. 
 A month later he spoke — "to the point and impres- 
 sively," a hearer says — at the funeral of Sergius Stepniak, 
 in the foggy drizzle outside Waterloo Station. During 
 December he lectured twice in London, on English 
 architecture and on Gothic illustrations to printed books. 
 The latter lecture, delivered at the Bolt Court Tech- 
 nical School, was the last he gave with his old vigour. 
 On the 3rd of January he attended the New Year's 
 meeting of the Social Democratic Federation at the 
 Holborn Town Hall, and made there a short, but noble 
 and touching speech on behalf of unity. Two days 
 afterwards, he gave the last of his Sunday evening 
 lectures at Kelmscott House. The subject of the lecture 
 was " One Socialist Party." <c Could not sleep at night," 
 he writes in his diary the next day ; " got up and worked 
 from 1 to 4 at Sundering Flood." On the 31st of 
 January he attended a meeting, at the Society of Arts, 
 of the Society for Checking the Abuses of Public Ad- 
 vertising, and made a brief speech in support of the first 
 resolution moved. He never spoke in public again after 
 this. On the day before, he had been for the last time 
 at the weekly meeting of the Society for Protection of 
 Ancient Buildings. As he walked up Buckingham Street 
 after the meeting, a friend ventured to observe, noting 
 his obvious weakness, that it was the worst time of the 
 year. " No, it ain't," he returned, " it 's a very fine time 
 of the year indeed : I'm getting old, that 's what it is." 
 
 On the 27 th of November he had written from Rot- 
 tingdean, where he had gone for a few days by himself, 
 to Lady Burne- Jones: 
 
 " To-day has been quite mild, and I started out at ten 
 
mt. 62] WILLIAM MORRIS 321 
 
 and went to a mountain with some barns on the top, and 
 a chalk pit near (where you took me one hot evening in 
 September , you remember), and I walked on thence a good 
 way, and should have gone further, but prudence rather 
 than weariness turned me back. They were ploughing 
 a field in the bottom with no less than ten teams of great 
 big horses : they were knocking off for their bever just 
 as I came on them, and seemed very jolly, and my heart 
 went out to them, both men and horses. 
 
 u I brought my University book " — this was Mr. 
 Rashdall's " Universities of Europe in the Middle 
 Ages," a work for which he expressed the highest re- 
 sped: and admiration — " down with me, but deserted it 
 yesterday afternoon for Jane Austen's c Pride and Preju- 
 dice/ which I have just finished. I am getting better 
 here, but was better on Sunday for the matter of that. 
 The doctor called on Monday, and told me it was good for 
 me not to be victimized by bores, and that I had better 
 not be : this seems to me such very good advice, that I 
 pass it on to you ; but am just struck with fear that you 
 may begin the practice of it on me. Anyhow I will be 
 cautious enough of it not to make this letter longer." 
 
 In December the Chaucer was making such good pro- 
 gress that he began to design a binding for it. Even 
 here he was confronted by the difficulty of obtaining 
 sound material. " Leather is not good now/' he said 
 in talking about this matter ; <c what used to take nine 
 months to cure is done in three. They used to say, 
 what 's longest in the tanyard stays least time in the 
 market : but that no longer holds good. People dorit 
 know how to buy now ; they 11 take anything^ The truth 
 in this last sentence goes very deep. The manufacturer 
 — so Morris perpetually urged — is but the servant of 
 the public, and the buyer is equally responsible with the 
 seller (each, he would add, doing their best to cheat the 
 
 11 v 
 
322 THE LIFE OF [1896 
 
 other) for a state of things which floods all markets with 
 cheap dishonest work. 
 
 As the Chaucer approached completion, Morris be- 
 came nervous about anything which threatened, however 
 remotely, to delay it. " Pd like it finished to-morrow/' 
 he answered, when asked how early a date would satisfy 
 him for its appearance : c< every day beyond to-morrow 
 that it isn't done is one too many.'' In his own library 
 one day before Christmas, a visitor looking over the 
 sheets that were lying on the table remarked on the 
 added beauty of those sheets following the Canterbury 
 Tales where pidlure-pages face one another in pairs. 
 Morris took alarm. " Now don't you go saying that 
 to Burne-Jones," he said, " or he'll be wanting to do the 
 first part over again ; and the worst of that would be, that 
 he'd want to do all the rest over again, because the other 
 would be so much better, and then we should never get 
 done, but always be going round and round in a circle." 
 The last of the eighty-seven pictures was finished two 
 days after Christmas. In the same week Morris had 
 begun to write the story of c< The Sundering Flood," 
 the last of his prose romances. During that December 
 he had enriched his collection of manuscripts by two 
 splendid examples of the thirteenth century, for which 
 he paid upwards of a thousand pounds ; one a folio Bible, 
 in three volumes, of French work of the end of the 
 century, and the other a Psalter of slightly earlier date, 
 variously ascribed to Rouen or Beauvais, and richly 
 adorned with miniatures in the finest manner of that fine 
 period. 
 
 With the turn of the year the weakness that had been 
 gaining on him for some months became much more 
 pronounced. He now suffered from an exhausting 
 cough ; he was losing flesh noticeably, and sleeplessness 
 became a regular feature of his nights. He wrote a 
 
jet. 63] WILLIAM MORRIS 323 
 
 little of cc The Sundering Flood" every day, and did work 
 nearly every day for initials and borders for the Kelms- 
 cott Press editions of " The Well at the World's End " 
 and " The Earthly Paradise." But his working hours 
 became shorter and shorter. In February another visit 
 to Rottingdean was tried, but he was languid and made 
 no improvement. On his return he was induced to 
 consult Sir William Broadbent. The existence of diabetes 
 and other complications was confirmed, but not to a 
 degree which implied immediate danger. There were 
 fluctuations and slight improvements followed by relapses, 
 but on the whole he was now steadily losing ground, and 
 as his weakness increased, losing heart. c< I don't feel 
 any better : so weak," is a pathetic note in his diary of 
 work at the end of February: and a journey round his 
 garden at Hammersmith was now sufficient to tire him. 
 The daily progress of the Chaucer was the one thing that 
 kept up his interest. It was now within sight of com- 
 pletion. The last three of the wood-blocks had beeir 
 brought him on the 21st of March. The Easter holi- 
 days in April, " four mouldy Sundays in a mouldy row, 
 the press shut and Chaucer at a standstill/' were almost 
 more than he could bear But his eagerness over the 
 acquisition of fresh manuscripts was unabated. In 
 March he had bought from Mr. W. A. S. Benson a 
 fine folio Testament of the twelfth century, which he dis* 
 covered, to his great delight, had belonged to the same 
 religious house near Dijon as a Josephus which he had 
 acquired a few months before. Towards the end of April 
 he was roused to great excitement by news of a splendid 
 twelfth-century English Bestiary, containing one hundred 
 and six miniatures, which was offered for sale by Mr. 
 Rosenthal of Munich. He at once began to negotiate 
 for it: as Mr. Rosenthal would not take the risk of 
 sending it on approval, Mr. Cockerell went to Stuttgart, 
 
324 THE LIFE OF [1896 
 
 where the book was, with full powers. It turned out to 
 be even finer than had been expe&ed ; even the British 
 Museum possessed nothing in Bestiaries equal to it. A 
 contemporary note in the book itself recorded that it had 
 been given in the year 1 1 87 to Worksop Priory , together 
 with other books, by one Philip, Canon of Lincoln. Both 
 writing and miniatures, with which it is profusely illus- 
 trated , were of the best and most characteristic English 
 st le of the period. Mr. Cockerell bought it for £900, 
 and brought it back with him to Kelmscott, where 
 Morris had gone for what turned out to be his last visit. 
 He was delighted with it beyond measure. 
 
 From Kelmscott he wrote, during this visit, to Lady 
 Burne-Jones ; 
 
 <c I cannot say that I think 1 am better since I saw you 
 a week ago ; and I hope I am no worse ; only you see 
 down in this deep quiet, away from the excitements of 
 business, and callers, and dodtors, one is rather apt to 
 brood, and I fear that I have made myself very disagree- 
 able at times. 
 
 " However, I am going on with my work, both draw- 
 ing and writing, though but little of the latter, as Walker 
 was with me Saturday and Sunday, to my great comfort. 
 Ellis comes on Saturday, and will stay till I go back. 
 Here everything is as beautiful as it can be : up to now 
 the season is a fine one, the grass well grown and well 
 coloured ; the apple-blossom plentifuller than we have 
 ever had it here. The weather with lots of sun, though I 
 should have preferred that alternated with a few warm 
 showers instead of the veil of cold cloud which has no 
 promise of rain in it (like Hud's dry cloud that hung 
 over the city of Sheddad, the son of Ad the Greater) and 
 withering wind with it. 
 
 u However I have enjoyed the garden very much, and 
 should never be bored by walking about and about in it. 
 
jet. 63] WILLIAM MORRIS 325 
 
 And though you think I don't like music, I assure you 
 that the rooks and the blackbirds have been a great con- 
 solation to me. We are still between the flowers, for 
 nothing stirs this beastly weather. The thing that was 
 the pleasingest surprise was the raspberry-canes, which 
 Giles has trellised up neatly, so that they look like a 
 mediaeval garden: they are thriving splendidly. 
 
 "Moreover Hobbs has been re-thatching a lot of 
 his sheds and barns, which sorely needed it, and used to 
 keep me in a fever of terror of galvanized iron: so that 
 this time at least there is some improvement in the 
 village." 
 
 At Kelmscott he had written the last of his contribu- 
 tions to the literature of Socialism, a brief article for the 
 May-Day number of <c Justice." When he returned to 
 London on the 6th of May he found that all the pi&ure 
 sheets of the Chaucer had been printed off, and the block 
 of the title-page was ready for approval. The printing 
 was completed two days later. At the end of May he 
 went for a few days to Mr. Wilfrid Blunt at Newbuild- 
 ings Place ; he was then too weak to work, but could 
 enjoy the beautiful West Sussex country. He returned 
 to London on the 30th : and on the 2nd of June the first 
 two copies of the Chaucer came from the binder, one for 
 himself and the other for Burne- Jones. Morris's own 
 copy is now in the library of Exeter College. The other 
 was given on the 3rd of June by Sir Edward Burne- 
 Jones to his daughter for her birthday. c< I want par- 
 ticularly to draw your attention," Burne- Jones wrote of 
 the volume when complete, and the feeling is one which 
 Morris himself fully and cordially shared, " to the fad 
 that there is no preface to Chaucer, and no introduction, 
 and no essay on his position as a poet, and no notes, and 
 no glossary; so that all is prepared for you to enjoy him 
 thoroughly." 
 
326 THE LIFE OF WILLIAM MORRIS [1896 
 
 Thus the work which had been for just five years in 
 project, and for three years and four months in a&ual 
 preparation and execution, was brought to a conclusion. 
 The printing had occupied a year and nine months. Be- 
 sides Burne- Jones's eighty-seven pictures, it contains a 
 full-page woodcut title, fourteen large borders, eighteen 
 borders or frames for the pictures, and twenty-six large 
 initial words. All of these, besides the ornamented initial 
 letters large and small, were designed by Morris himself, 
 as was the white pigskin binding with silver clasps, 
 executed at Mr. Cobden-Sanderson's bindery by Mr. 
 Douglas Cockerell, in which the Kelmscott Chaucer re- 
 ceives its complete form. 
 
CHAPTER XXII 
 
 ILICET 
 
 It was his last finished work. His weakness was 
 already so great that the ambiguous reports of profes- 
 sional advisers could no longer conceal the fa<5t that the 
 end was not far off. He still, on days when the de- 
 pression of his illness was less severe, cherished the hope 
 of going on with the great Froissart, which was to be a 
 sister volume to the Chaucer, and with the sumptuous 
 folio edition of his own * Sigurd the Volsung." The 
 series of woodcuts for the <c Sigurd " from drawings by 
 Sir Edward Burne- Jones had been already planned, and 
 a number of designs for them made. In May Burne- 
 Jones, though with but little hope that the work could 
 ever be carried out, had offered to increase the number 
 of these pictures to forty. The proposal had been joy- 
 fully accepted by Morris, and roused him for a little 
 into fresh life. His daily work was now mainly design- 
 ing borders for the " Sigurd," and he still was able to do 
 a little at it every day. Before either of these large 
 works, however, another small book was to have been 
 printed, which would have been one of the most beautiful 
 products of the Kelmscott Press. This was the tale of 
 u The Hill of Venus," to be written in prose by himself 
 and adorned by the twelve exquisite designs made by 
 Burne-Jones for the story nearly thirty years before. 
 
 At the beginning of July he completed his collection of 
 painted books by a Psalter which for style, colour, and 
 
328 THE LIFE OF [1896 
 
 execution was the finest of them all. He gave it the name 
 of the Windmill Psalter from a windmill which was pro- 
 minent in the design upon the page next following the 
 "Beatus." This book, a folio of about the year 1 270, had 
 been acquired, with several leaves missing, about five and 
 twenty years previously, by Mr. Henry Hucks-Gibbs, 
 now Lord Aldenham. Four of the missing leaves were, 
 however, extant, and had been sold many years before by 
 Ellis to Mr. Fairfax Murray, who after much solicitation 
 had consented to exchange them with Morris for five 
 sheets of drawings on vellum by an Italian master of the 
 fifteenth century. Lord Aldenham's book was exhibited 
 among the English manuscripts colle&ed and shown in 
 the summer of 1896 by the Society of Antiquaries in 
 their rooms at Burlington House. To that exhibition 
 Morris also lent the four leaves in question, together 
 with six of the best of his own English painted books. 
 They were placed next the book to which they had 
 originally belonged. When Morris went with Burne- 
 Jones on the 5th of June to see the collection, the re- 
 lationship of the two portions of the book was obvious. 
 <c We looked/' Morris writes exultantly the next day to 
 Ellis, " and lo ! there was no doubt — there was the book 
 with the due hiatuses. And now, whatten a book was 
 that, my man ? Why, as soon as I saw its second leaf, 
 I recognized it as the book which I saw in your shop in 
 Bond Street, and which I have talked so much to you 
 about, and which you told me you sold, or some one 
 else sold, to Hucks-Gibbs. Are you thunderstruck ? 
 But now the question is, How am I to get hold of the 
 Hucks-Gibbs ' fragment ' ? Perhaps you can suggest 
 some course of procedure. Come up and talk about it." 
 
 Finally, after much debate, Morris wrote to Lord 
 Aldenham explaining the case, and offering him £1,000 
 for the Psalter. He was out of town ; and the three 
 
jet. 63] WILLIAM MORRIS 329 
 
 days that passed before his answer came were spent by- 
 Morris in much agitation. At last the answer came. 
 €i Letter in morning," Morris notes in his diary, cc from 
 Lord A., kind and friendly, will let me have the book. 
 Sent Cockerell after it with cheque in afternoon, and it 
 came back at 4 : a great wonder." 
 
 There were two other books in the exhibition at 
 Burlington House which he coveted as much or even 
 more. One was the famous Apocalypse from the Arch- 
 bishop's Library at Lambeth, " a book with the most 
 amazing design and beauty in it." This was, of course, 
 unattainable. But the other was in private ownership ; 
 it was a Psalter, even finer than Lord Aldenham's, be- 
 longing to the Duke of Rutland : " such a book ! my 
 eyes ! and I am beating my brains to see if I can find 
 any thread of an intrigue to begin upon, so as to creep 
 and crawl toward the possession of it." He entered on 
 negotiations, and offered a much higher sum than he had 
 paid for the Windmill Psalter, but in vain; and this last 
 pleasure was denied him. 
 
 For the greater part of June he had been, by medical 
 advice, staying at Folkestone to try the effedts of change 
 of air, but without any beneficial result. His nervous 
 prostration had by this time become very great. The 
 news which he learned on the way down to Folkestone 
 of the death of his old friend, John Henry Middleton, 
 completely broke him down. "I did like him very 
 much," he wrote mournfully to Lady Burne-Jones a 
 few days afterwards : <c we had a deal to talk about, and 
 much in common as to our views of things and the world, 
 and his friendliness to his friends was beyond measure." 
 But he enjoyed strolling about the harbour and walking 
 on the Leas, and on one very fine bright day he man- 
 aged to go to Boulogne and back with Mr. Cockerell. 
 Relays of friends came down to keep him company: Sir 
 
330 THE LIFE OF [1896 
 
 Edward and Lady Burne- Jones, Mr. Ellis, Mr. Cocke- 
 rell, Mr. Wilfrid Blunt, Mr. E. Walker, Mr. Catterson- 
 Smith. On the 24th of June the first fully bound copy 
 of his Chaucer was brought down to him by Mr. Douglas 
 Cockerell, and was approved by him as in every way 
 satisfactory. On his return to London early in July, 
 he went to report himself to Sir William Broadbent. 
 " He thought me a little better (I'm not), and ordered 
 me a sea voyage." 
 
 The voyage fixed on was one to Norway, on an Orient 
 liner which was making a special trip as far as Spitz- 
 bergen for the solar eclipse of that year. It was hoped 
 that the keen northern sea air might prove beneficial, 
 and that the historic associations of Norway might serve 
 to alleviate the monotony of the voyage. Much to his 
 satisfaction, his old friend, Mr. John Carruthers, the 
 companion of other journeys in previous years, found 
 himself at the last moment able to go with him. They 
 started on the 22nd of July. The last entry in his diary 
 had been made on the 20th. 
 
 But the voyage, whether wisely counselled or not, was 
 not happy either in its progress or in its results. His 
 beloved books and manuscripts had to be left behind : 
 he suffered from almost constant weariness and rest- 
 lessness : he was not able to make any excursions in- 
 land, and the melancholy of the firths struck a chill on 
 his spirits in spite of fine weather and warm suns. OS 
 Bergen a last gleam of the Viking spirit came over him 
 as he gazed on c< the old hills which the eyes of the old 
 men looked on when they did their best against the 
 Weirds." But his own fighting days were over. 
 
 He stayed at Vadso near the North Cape for the week 
 in which the steamer went on to Spitzbergen and re- 
 turned. On the morning of the 18th of August he 
 arrived again at Tilbury, with only one anxious wish, to 
 
jet. 63] WILLIAM MORRIS 331 
 
 get away to Kelmscott as soon as possible. But his ill- 
 ness took a serious turn a day or two afterwards, and the 
 dodtors had to forbid his removal. He never left 
 Hammersmith again. He was so weak now that he had 
 to didtate the few letters he wrote, though on some days 
 he did a little designing of letters and ornaments for 
 the Press. To his old friend, Mr. Thomas Wardle of 
 Leek, who had written pressing him to try the effed of 
 rest and the pure Derbyshire air at Swainslow, he wrote 
 as follows, the body of the letter being di&ated and the 
 signature added feebly in his own hand : 
 
 " Kelmscott House, 
 
 " August 26th, 1896. 
 
 " My dear Wardle, 
 
 " It is very Kind of you to invite me to share in 
 your paradise, and I am absolutely delighted to find 
 another beautiful place which is still in its untouched 
 loveliness. I should certainly have accepted your invi- 
 tation, but I am quite unable to do so, for at present I 
 cannot walk over the threshold, being so intensely weak. 
 The Manifold is the same river, is it not, which you 
 carried me across on your back, which situation tickled 
 us so much that, owing to inextinguishable laughter, you 
 very nearly dropped me in. What pleasant old times 
 those were. 
 
 " With all good wishes and renewed thanks, 
 " I am yours very truly, 
 
 cc William Morris." 
 
 On the 8th of September, with some difficulty, he dic- 
 tated the last dozen lines of "The Sundering Flood" to 
 Mr. Cockerell, and seemed to find relief in having been 
 able to bring it to a conclusion. The last letter he had 
 been able to write himself was one of a few lines to 
 Lady Burne- Jones, who was at Rottingdean, on the 1st 
 
332 THE LIFE OF [1896 
 
 of September. " Come soon," it ends, cc I want a sight 
 of your dear face." 
 
 During his absence two more books had been issued 
 from the Kelmscott Press. One of them, "Laudes Beatae 
 Marias Virginis," consisted of a series of Latin poems to 
 the Virgin, from an English Psalter of the early thirteenth 
 century which was one of the manuscripts in his own 
 possession, and one of extreme beauty as regards both 
 writing and ornament. For the first time he had, in 
 this beautiful little volume, tried the experiment of print- 
 ing in three colours. The result was entirely successful, 
 and the effe6t of the red was much enhanced by the fine 
 blue which he used as the third colour. The other book 
 was the first volume of a sumptuous eight-volume edition 
 of "The Earthly Paradise." A second volume was issued 
 in September. The remaining six, all of which include 
 borders and half borders specially designed by him and 
 not used in any other book, were completed and issued 
 after his death. In these posthumous volumes, however, 
 there are three borders which had been designed in 
 Morris's manner by Mr. Catterson-Smith ; these being 
 the only instances of any letter, border, or ornament 
 (with the exception of a little Greek type which occurs 
 in two books) printed at the Kelmscott Press and not 
 aftually designed by Morris himself and drawn with his 
 own hand. 
 
 Among the projects that had dated from the earliest 
 days of the Press were two which various circumstances 
 had from time to time put off, and which were now once 
 more much in his mind. One of these was the printing 
 of a selection of mediaeval English lyrical poetry. He 
 had discussed the plan of such a book with Mr. Wyatt 
 when they were working together at " Beowulf," and 
 just before he started on the voyage to Norway Mr. 
 Wyatt had sent him a list of early English poems for 
 
jet. 63] WILLIAM MORRIS 
 
 333 
 
 consideration. Sut he was too weak then to do anything 
 with it. The other proposed volume was one which lay- 
 even nearer his heart ; it was a volume of the Border 
 Ballads, which had been his delight since boyhood, and 
 which he often maintained to be the highest achievement 
 in poetry which the language had to show. This also 
 had been planned years before; and early in 1894 he 
 had been discussing the thorny question of a text with 
 Ellis. He had persuaded himself that it was possible to 
 form such a text by sele&ion from the different versions. 
 cc You see," he said, cc no one version has more authority 
 than another; it is a matter of literary merit;" — and 
 no doubt were the formation of such a text at all possible, 
 it would have had its best chances of success in his hands. 
 During this autumn, when he was too ill to do anything 
 else, he amused himself by having the ballads read aloud 
 to him and beginning to form his own version. Mr. 
 Ellis, who was daily with him, and who did most of this 
 work for him, was well aware that the selection could 
 never be completed, and no longer argued the question 
 with him. 
 
 Among the larger unexecuted projects which had at 
 one time or another been formed for the Kelmscott Press, 
 the Shakespeare in three folio volumes, which had been 
 announced in 1893, had been definitely abandoned, and 
 the reprint of the English Bible of 161 1, though not 
 formally given up, had receded into a problematical 
 future. The cc Sigurd " and the Froissart would have been 
 the work of at least two years ; and after them the next 
 work planned was to have been a volume of even greater 
 magnificence than the Chaucer, a folio edition of Malory's 
 " Morte d' Arthur," for which Sir Edward Burne- Jones 
 was to design at least a hundred pictures. With the added 
 experience and increased technical skill now available, it 
 should have eclipsed even the Chaucer in splendour of 
 
334 THE LIFE OF [1896 
 
 design and beauty of execution. Of other items in the 
 mass of work which lay before the Press, an account is 
 given in the last book issued from it before it was finally 
 wound up in March, 1898. In that little volume Mr. 
 Cockerel! has added to Morris's own account of his aims 
 in founding and conducting the Press, a description of 
 its inception and progress, and an annotated list of the 
 books printed at it, with a fullness, lucidity, and accuracy 
 which leave nothing to be desired. 
 
 Morris himself was now known by his friends to be a 
 dying man. On his return from Norway congestion of 
 the left lung had set in, which remained persistent, and 
 the general organic degeneration made steady progress. 
 His old fear of death had long left him, but his desire 
 to live remained almost as strong as ever till he became 
 too weak to desire anything. As the power of self-con- 
 trol slackened, the emotional tenderness which had always 
 been so large an element in his nature became more 
 habitually visible. On one of her latest visits, Lady 
 Burne-Jones tells me, he broke into tears when some- 
 thing was said about the hard life of the poor. He had 
 a longing to hear for the last time some of that older 
 music for which he had so great an admiration. Mr. 
 Arnold Dolmetsch brought down a pair of virginals to 
 Kelmscott House, and played to him several pieces by 
 English composers of the sixteenth century. A pavan 
 and galliard by William Byrd were what Morris liked 
 most. He broke into a cry of joy at the opening 
 phrase, and after the two pieces had been repeated at his 
 request, was so deeply stirred that he could not bear to 
 hear any more. 
 
 The weariness of that September was also alleviated 
 by the thoughtful kindness of Mr. R. H. Benson, who 
 took to him, one after another, several of the priceless 
 thirteenth-century manuscripts from the Dorchester 
 
jet, 63J WILLIAM MORRIS 335 
 
 House library : among them a Psalter written at Amiens, 
 and a book even more fascinating to him, a " Bible His- 
 toriee et Vies des Saints " containing, besides initial and 
 marginal ornament of unsurpassed wealth and beauty of 
 invention, no less than one thousand and thirty-four pic- 
 tures, beginning with the Creation and concluding with 
 the coming of Antichrist and the end of the world, 
 toutes ymaginees et etitulees et p escripture exposees. This 
 last book he had by him for a week, and though he was 
 too weak to look at it for more than a few minutes 
 together, he always went back to it with fresh delight. 
 
 During the last weeks he was attended, beyond his 
 own family, by the untiring devotion of his friends. 
 Miss Mary De Morgan brought to this last service all 
 the skill born of long experience, and the intelligent 
 sympathy of an affecftion which Morris had for many 
 years cordially returned. Sir Edward and Lady Burne- 
 Jones, Mr. Webb, and Mr. Ellis were with him almost 
 dailv. Mr. Cockerell was ceaseless in his zeal and care : 
 and Mr. Emery Walker nursed him with the patience 
 and tenderness of a woman. On the morning of Satur- 
 day the 3rd of Odlober, between eleven and twelve 
 o'clock, he died quietly and without visible suffering. 
 
 No man on earth dies before his day : and least of all 
 can the departure be called premature of a man whose 
 life had been so crowded in activity and so rich in achieve- 
 ment. To one judging by the work done in it, his 
 working day was longer and ampler than often falls to 
 the lot of our brief and pitiable human race. But the 
 specific reasons why that life was not protracted beyond 
 its sixty-third year are not difficult to assign. On the 
 paternal side of his family there was a marked neurotic 
 and gouty tendency. Himself of powerful physique, 
 deep-chested, sound-lunged, big-hearted, he yet carried 
 
33 6 THE LIFE OF [1896 
 
 in him that family weakness, which was developed under 
 the pressure of an immensely busy life. On a constitution 
 made sensitive by gout, the exposure of the years of the 
 Socialist crusade, when he had perpetually spoken in the 
 open air in all weathers, and in the worse than open air 
 of indoor meetings, and had often negledled or forgone 
 proper food and rest, told with fatal effedt. <c I have no 
 hesitation," his family dodtor writes to me, " in saying 
 that he died a viftim to his e husiasm for spreading the 
 principles of Socialism." Yet this was only the special 
 form that, in those years, his unceasing and prodigious 
 activity had taken : and these words may be enlarged or 
 supplemented by those of an eminent member of the 
 same profession : fc I consider the case is this : the disease 
 is simply being William Morris, and having done more 
 work than most ten men." 
 
 " Remembering those early years," says Sir Edward 
 Burne- Jones, cc and comparing them with the last in 
 which I knew him, the life is one continuous course. His 
 earliest enthusiasms were his latest. The thirteenth cen- 
 tury was his ideal period then, and it was still the same 
 in our last talks together ; nor would he ever wander 
 from his allegiance. The changes that have come over 
 later impressions about art passed beside him or under 
 him with scarcely any notice." 
 
 With all the patience and conciliatoriness of his later 
 years, he remained absolutely unshaken in his loyalty to 
 his old opinions and to his old associates. u He was 
 most tolerable with the opinions of others," are the 
 quaint but touching words of one of his colleagues of 
 the Socialist League. But his own opinions were never 
 withdrawn or concealed; and to the last he could be 
 roused to anger by any slighting words about things for 
 which his own admiration was a fixed article of faith. 
 Among the younger men who came about him in these 
 
jet. 63] WILLIAM MORRIS 337 
 
 years were some who, full of the latest ideas and methods 
 in painting, were ready to disparage the work of Burne- 
 Jones. One of them ventured, one day at Kelmscott 
 House, to give some expression of this disparagement, 
 fancying perhaps that Morris might not find it wholly 
 ungrateful. Morris, as his wont was when things were 
 not going to his mind, began to walk about the room 
 and fidget with the things lying on his study table. His 
 visitor continued, undeterred by these warnings. Then 
 
 Morris broke out. c< Look here, ," he said, " you 
 
 mustn't say that sort of thing in mixed company, you 
 know, or you'll run a great chance of being taken for a 
 fool." 
 
 For Burne- Jones his own admiration was undulled 
 by their complete and lifelong fraternity, and untouched 
 by any later divergence in social habit or dodlrine. Even 
 in matters of art they did not see alike. Just as the 
 restless energy of the one was in strong contrast to the 
 other's patient scholarship and continuous absorption, so 
 they received or re-incarnated the Middle Ages through 
 the eyes and brain in the one case of a Norman, in the 
 other of a Florentine. But these very differences only 
 made them the more fully complementary to one another. 
 Morris's deep feeling for Burne-Jones's work is ex- 
 pressed, though in studiously restrained language, in the 
 Birmingham address of 1891 on the Pre-Raphaelite 
 School. But it may be even better judged from a more 
 casual utterance. Once at the Grange he was — perhaps 
 for the hundredth time — pressing for more and yet more 
 designs for woodcuts for the Kelmscott Press. <c You 
 would think," Sir Edward said, turning to me with his 
 wonderful smile, " to listen to Top, that I was the only 
 artist in the world." c< Well," said Morris quietly, 
 " perhaps you wouldn't be so far wrong." 
 
 With well-meaning persons who came to him for 
 
 n. z 
 
338 THE LIFE OF [1896 
 
 advice or information he had grown wonderfully tolerant. 
 In reply to an earnest correspondent who had asked his 
 views on the subjedt of temperance, he replied in a letter 
 which deserves record for its exquisite interplay of de- 
 mure humour and solid sense. 
 
 " Dear Sir," he wrote, " I think the question of the 
 advantage of alcoholic liquors is a matter which each 
 man must find out for himself, having admitted that one 
 may easily drink too much even without getting drunk. 
 My own experience is that I find my vi&uals dull with- 
 out something to drink, and that tea and coffee are not 
 fit liquors to be taken with food: in fa6t the latter always 
 disagrees with me palpably, and probably tea isn't good 
 for me. It is a remarkable fad that in Iceland toothache 
 was almost unknown till the introduction of tea and 
 coffee : the latter drink the Icelanders are now much 
 addidled to. 
 
 <c If I were to say what I really think I should say 
 that tobacco seems to me a more dangerous intoxicant 
 than liquors, because people can and do smoke to excess 
 without becoming beastly and a nuisance. I am sure 
 that Oriental countries have suffered much from the in- 
 troduction of tobacco. N.B. — I am a smoker myself. A 
 great point would be to try to get the liquors free from 
 adulteration. But that I fear is impossible under a capi- 
 talistic regime" 
 
 His patience even extended to others less worthy of 
 it : to those who came to him with the more or less con- 
 cealed intention of getting something to their own ad- 
 vantage out of him, or in order to instrudt him on 
 matters in which he had taught their teachers. When 
 his activity in the Socialist movement brought round 
 him a mass of more or less disreputable professing ad- 
 herents, whose application of the principles of Socialism 
 did not go much beyond the idea that Morris should 
 
mt. 63] WILLIAM MORRIS 339 
 
 share his money with them, he carried his indulgence to 
 an extreme pitch, He told a friend of his once that 
 a young man and woman, quite unknown, had called on 
 him and asked him to give them a start, as they were 
 going to be married. u Were they Socialists ?" his friend 
 asked. <c I don't know," Morris answered ; <c I suppose 
 so. I gave them five pounds to get rid of them, as I 
 was busy." 
 
 The life of insults through which he had passed both 
 before and after he became a Socialist had at last left 
 him almost secure of his own temper. His friend, Mr. 
 Newman Howard, has told me that once when they had 
 been doing business together, he took Morris to his own 
 club, which was a Conservative one. An acquaintance 
 of Mr. Howard's, who did not know Morris, sat down 
 at the same table with them, and opened conversation 
 with Morris by asking, " Well, what do you think of 
 these strikes? I can tell you : it isn't so much the work- 
 men : it 's those damned Socialist leaders. They are in- 
 fernal thieves and rascals, the whole lot of them." Bland 
 and impenetrable, Morris only answered " Indeed," in 
 such a quiet flat voice as made it impossible to continue 
 the subjed. 
 
 One result of that growing patience was to make him 
 more indifferent to criticism. As much from a certain 
 u childlike shamelessness " which has been noted by one 
 of his most intimate friends as his deepest quality , as from 
 his no less unique self-absorption in his own thoughts 
 and feelings, external criticism had never much affedled 
 him. No doubt there must have been a certain loss in 
 this carelessness to the effe6b which his work, and he 
 himself, made on others. Criticism has its value in letting 
 an artist, or a human being, see, more clearly than he 
 could do of his own self, to what he and his work really 
 amount for his fellow-artists and fellow-creatures: and 
 
34° THE LIFE OF [1896 
 
 the absence of sensitiveness in an artist to the effect pro- 
 duced by his work may imply even for the work itself 
 a certain loss of sensitiveness and flexibility. With 
 Morris one often felt that it would make little or no 
 difference to him if no one else ever saw his designs or 
 read his books. Certainly it made no difference to him 
 whether they met with approval from the world, or even 
 from other artists in other methods. He might have 
 taken for his own an ancient Celtic saying : <c God has 
 made out of his abundance a separate wisdom for every- 
 thing that lives, and to do these things is my wisdom." 
 
 To criticism of his writings, whether in prose or verse, 
 he was particularly indifferent. In his poems and his 
 prose romances alike, he had set before himself an object 
 or an effedt with perfect clearness : how far he had 
 executed his own design, how far fallen short of it, he 
 felt he knew better than any one could teach him ; and 
 that his design was not what this or that other person 
 would have chosen, was not what the public liked or 
 understood, was not, in a word, something else instead 
 of being itself, were matters to him of infinite unconcern. 
 The adverse criticisms encountered by his prose romances 
 on the ground of their mannerisms of vocabulary and 
 construction never induced him to modify the diction 
 which he had chosen, and which was in truth natural to 
 him in a much deeper way than modern newspaper 
 English is natural to the ordinary educated writer. The 
 common literary English of the present day Morris de- 
 nounced as a a wretched mongrel jargon," corresponding 
 in its own vices to the so-called modern architecture. 
 His own prose style, so difficult to the average careless 
 reader, he maintained to be far simpler and more natural. 
 So indeed it essentially is, as may be seen by the sudden 
 contrast, like a patch of bad colour in a tapestry, when 
 from carelessness or weariness or the mere overwhelming 
 
jet, 63] WILLIAM MORRIS 341 
 
 force of surroundings, he has here and there allowed his 
 style for a few lines together to slip into modernism. 
 But he confessed mournfully that for working men (and 
 he thought that working men had a natural intelligence 
 at least equal to that of the middle classes) his writing 
 was <c too simple to be understood." The debased modern 
 journalistic style, like the debased modern typography, 
 had grown so familiar from universal use, that a reversion 
 to older and purer types threw people out, and made them 
 complain of a difficulty which they quite honestly felt. 
 
 cc Verse has a privilege to be more old-fashioned than 
 prose," observes one of the most scholarly and accom- 
 plished of his critics in discussing "The Roots of the 
 Mountains " ; " but Mr. Morris's prose is more old- 
 fashioned than his verse." This is true ; it seems, how- 
 ever, to miss or ignore the fadl which is essential to a 
 sympathetic understanding of the whole of Morris's work, 
 that in literature as well as in the manual arts he was 
 throughout his life striving to take up and continue the 
 dropped threads of the mediaeval tradition ; and that his 
 work in both fields, while it was in one sense completely 
 modern and even in advance of his age, was based on 
 the return to and development of methods which had 
 long since gone out of fashion, if they had not become 
 completely obsolete. To go back to the fourteenth cen- 
 tury, not with the view of staying there, but of advancing 
 from it on what he conceived to be the true high road 
 out of which the arts had long wandered, was his perpetual 
 principle. But it so happens (whether from anything 
 essential to the art or from particular causes to be sought 
 in history) that the fashion of poetry has changed much 
 less since Chaucer's time than the fashion of prose. The 
 English version of the " Gesta Romanorum " (a work 
 which Morris considered to be the perfection of English 
 prose) is, though more recent in date, more old-fashioned 
 
342 THE LIFE OF [1896 
 
 than either Piers Plowman or the Canterbury Tales : or 
 in Chaucer himself, the Tale of Meliboeus, or the Treatise 
 on the Astrolabe, is more old-fashioned than the Knight's 
 Tale, or than the Book of Troilus and Cressida. It 
 was some feeling of this sort, in combination with his 
 inveterate love of paradox, that made Morris repeatedly 
 startle his friends by casually alluding to Chaucer as 
 Cf the great corrupter of the English language/' For in 
 matters of style and di&ion, Chaucer, as is proved by 
 the fa6fc that English poetry made no sensible advance for 
 a hundred and fifty years after him, was far in advance 
 of his own day. Whether Morris's attempt to launch 
 English prose style on this fresh pathway was successful 
 is a different question, and one which perhaps few scholars 
 would hesitate to answer in the negative. But his prose 
 was as sincere, and as little a forced copy of mediaeval 
 work, as were his illuminated manuscripts, or his painted 
 windows. This may be a reason, if reason has to be 
 assigned, why none of the various parodies of his style 
 bear much resemblance to the original. 
 
 For the refined produfts of modern ingenuity which 
 did not root themselves back on that old tradition, he 
 had as little taste in literature as in painting. The 
 modern books which in later life he read with the great- 
 est enjoyment were those which, without artifice or dis- 
 tinction of style, dealt with a life, whether aftual or 
 imaginary, which approached his ideal in its simplicity 
 and its close relation to nature, especially among a race 
 of people who remained face to face with the elementary 
 fa6ts of life, and had never become fully sophisticated 
 by civilization. In this spirit, he admired and praised 
 works like Mr. Doughty's " Arabia Deserta," or " Uncle 
 Remus," from which he was always willing and eager to 
 read aloud, or "Huck Finn," which he half-jestingly 
 pronounced to be the greatest thing, whether in art or 
 
jet. 63] WILLIAM MORRIS 343 
 
 nature, that America had produced. For refinement of 
 style, for subtle psychology in creation, he had but little 
 taste. He could not admire either Meredith or Steven- 
 son. When he was introduced to Ibsen's plays, and 
 called on to join in admiring their union of accomplished 
 dramatic craftsmanship with the most modern movement 
 of ideas, they were dismissed by him in the terse and 
 comprehensive criticism, " Very clever, I must say." But 
 neither did elaboration of style nor advanced modernism 
 of treatment stand in the way of his appreciation when 
 the substance of a book was to his liking ; and among the 
 books which in recent years he praised most highly were 
 the masterpieces of Pierre Loti and Maurice Maeterlinck. 
 
 <c Master of himself and therefore of all near him," 
 Morris at the same time retained the most childlike 
 simplicity in the expression of his adlual thoughts or 
 feelings on any subjedt, and was as little hampered by 
 false shame as he was guided by convention. In some 
 points he remained an absolute child to the end of his 
 life. If you introduced him to a friend, and he had the 
 faintest suspicion that he was there to be shown off, his 
 manners instantly became intolerable. As childlike was 
 another of his characteristics, the constant desire to be in 
 adtual touch with the things he loved. He became a 
 member of the Society of Antiquaries for no other reason 
 than that he might be part-owner of one of their mediaeval 
 painted books. The mere handling of a beautiful thing 
 seemed to give him intense physical pleasure. c< If you 
 have got one of his books in your hands for a minute," 
 Burne- Jones said of him, <c he'll take it away from you 
 as if you were hurting it, and show it you himself." He 
 never in any case could conceal his hand in a matter of 
 business : but when he was bargaining with Quaritch for 
 an old book of which the possession meant more to him 
 than the price, he would make the fad plain by carrying 
 
344 THE LIFE OF [1896 
 
 on the negotiation with the book tucked tightly under 
 his arm, as if it might run away. The resemblance 
 already glanced at between him and Samuel Johnson 
 had grown stronger in these latter years : and it was as 
 visible in his eager width of interest as in the contradic- 
 tiousness and love of paradox in which he was perhaps 
 excelled by Johnson alone. Both men had this spirit of 
 contradi&ion constantly afting in curious combination 
 with what was, if not fair-mindedness, at all events an 
 unshaken and fundamental integrity of intellect. Like 
 Johnson, Morris had a way of applying hard logic to 
 matters in which most men are content to be guided by 
 compromise or fashion. Both were acute and severe 
 critics of what is called women's work, and were fas- 
 tidious in their appreciation of women's dress and looks, 
 yet were little affe&ed by what women thought of them, 
 and preferred men's to women's society. Morris allowed 
 himself to be drawn freely by inquisitive acquaintances, 
 and was ready to lay down the law on any conceivable 
 topic ; but any amateur Boswell was liable to be suddenly 
 turned upon and tossed. His large tolerance for bores 
 was united with a keen insight into their charafter : he 
 would allow one of that class to make heavy drafts on 
 his time, and purse, and patience, and only incidentally 
 note him in a quiet, but scathing phrase, as "hen-headed," 
 or c< a sponge," or " a cripple whose smoking flax I have 
 not conscientious boldness enough to quench." Like 
 Johnson ( u I am well-bred to a degree of needless scru- 
 pulosity " are the immortal words recorded by Mrs. 
 Thrale), he c< looked upon himself as a very polite man," 
 prided himself on his manners, and was capable of the 
 most amazing and almost supernatural rudeness towards 
 both men and women. Many of Johnson's sayings sound 
 most natural in Morris's familiar intonation, and accom- 
 panied by his tricks of gesture; and his own familiar 
 
jet. 63] WILLIAM MORRIS 345 
 
 talk was full of sentences which, were they inserted in 
 Boswell, could hardly be distinguished from the true 
 Johnsonian context. 
 
 But this likeness was crossed and shot by the vein of 
 high romance which coloured all he ever thought or did. 
 In him this turn of mind had all the seriousness, though 
 not the lack of balance, that is associated with the name 
 of Quixotry. Seriousness was what lay deepest of all in 
 him; and the comparison which clings most intimately, 
 of all the many made, in sport or in earnest, by his 
 friends, is one incidentally and lightly dropped, only a 
 few months before his death, by one for whom familiarity 
 had not dulled the edge of observation. The figure seen 
 by him one evening, in the cloak and satchel, the soft hat 
 pulled down over his eyes and the stick firmly grasped 
 and held point forward as he walked straight on, seem- 
 ing to see nothing of all that was round him — yet in 
 fa6t seeing it and taking it all in with incomparable 
 swiftness — through the glare and bustle of the Strand, 
 was like one other person and one only, Christian pass- 
 ing through Vanity Fair. 
 
 That seriousness and simplicity of mind, even more 
 than the less approachable and intelligible qualities of 
 his lonely genius, was what held his friends to him with a 
 strength of attachment that neither his own inner remote- 
 ness nor his swift turns from one interest to another 
 could loosen. They often had a sense of being dragged 
 at his heels, perplexed and out of breath ; but they felt 
 through it all that to his own eyes the way lay perfectly 
 straight forward. c< He led us all a dance," one of his 
 closest friends said to me in speaking of one of those 
 times when, without troubling himself to give much 
 explanation, or to break his new departure gently to his 
 panting followers, he swung rapidly round on a new 
 front — " not for the first or last time : would he could 
 
346 THE LIFE OF [1896 
 
 lead us some more ! " For as long as he lived those 
 who knew him felt confident that he would be in the 
 fullest sense, and at every moment, alive : this or that 
 interest might pass, one or another occupation be taken 
 up or discarded, but the interest of living, the occupa- 
 tion of creating and working, would never lessen or 
 falter. 
 
 To the same central quality, the seriousness and sim- 
 plicity which walked, without noticing them, through 
 all the hedges and over all the ditches of worldly conven- 
 tion, it was due that he was so conspicuously at his ease 
 in the society of a class different from his own. Civility 
 to inferiors was certainly not one of his strong points ; 
 and the aristocratic temper of his youth would show 
 itself even in his latest years. But it was a temper 
 rather than a principle ; in a very real sense he treated 
 his servants or workmen as he treated his social equals ; 
 and though he often, in the terse phrase of common usage, 
 wiped his boots on a man, he never either showed or felt 
 towards him the more stinging insolence of condescension. 
 To working men he was like one of themselves, one who 
 worked as they did and lived a quite intelligible life, but 
 who was full of queer, and for the most part fantastic or 
 unintelligible, ideas. Yet many letters received after his 
 death show that working men held him in real honour, 
 and felt a personal grief for the loss of one who had been 
 on their side, who had meant well by them, who had 
 brought to some degree a new meaning into their own 
 life. Such tributes are apt to be paid in an artificial 
 currency ; but in these letters a sincere emotion struggles 
 to express itself through the worn and ill-fitting phrases, 
 the stock of cheap ready-made clothing for ideas which 
 the industry and keen intelligence of commercial journal- 
 ism, copying with a fatal instind: all that is worst in its 
 models, produces wholesale for an ever widening market. 
 
jet. 63] WILLIAM MORRIS 347 
 
 In an ill-spelled and touching letter, the Walthamstow 
 Branch of the Navvies' and General Labourers' Union 
 expressed their admiration for his " noble works and 
 genuine counsel," <c the seed that so noble a man sowed 
 in his great and useful life." On behalf of a Lancashire 
 Branch of the Social Democratic Federation their secre- 
 tary wrote, " Comrade Morris is not dead there is not a 
 Socialist living whould belive him dead for he Lives in 
 the heart of all true men and women still and will do so 
 to the end of time." In even simpler words one of the 
 textile workers at Merton Abbey wrote to Mrs. Morris, 
 Cf Dear Madam, I loved and honoured my Master, 
 therefore I mourn with you, excuse this intrusion, I can- 
 not help it. May God support and comfort you is the 
 prayer of your faithful servant." 
 
 In the Northern Sagas, as in the heroic cycle of ancient 
 Greece, a man's life is not fully ended till he has been 
 laid under ground, and the accident of death has been 
 followed by the sacred offices of burial. That reluctance 
 to end the story, to part with its hero until the funeral 
 pyre was out and the last valediction over, was an attitude 
 of mind which Morris himself specially loved; and if 
 we may believe that any sense of the last rites performed 
 over them may touch the dead, he might find a last 
 satisfaction in the simple and impressive ceremony of his 
 funeral. He was buried in the little churchyard of 
 Kelmscott on the 6th of October. The night had been 
 wet, and morning lightened dully over soaking meadows, 
 fading away in a blur of mist. As the day went on, the 
 wind and rain both increased, and rose in the afternoon 
 to a tempest. The storm, which raged with great 
 violence over the whole country, with furious south- 
 westerly gales, reached its greatest force in the upper 
 Thames valley. The low-lying lands were flooded, and 
 
348 THE LIFE OF [1896 
 
 all the little streams that are fed from the Cotswolds ran 
 full and deep brown. The noise of waters was every- 
 where. Clumps of Michaelmas daisies were in flower in 
 the drenched cottage gardens, and the thinning willows 
 had turned, not to the brilliance of their common Odtober 
 colouring, but to a dull tarnished gold. The rooks were 
 silent in the elms about the Manor House. Apples lay 
 strewn on the grass in the orchard. In the garden, the 
 yew dragon, untrimmed since his own hand had last 
 clipped it, had sprouted out into bristles. A few pink 
 roses and sweet peas still lingered among the chrysan- 
 themums and dahlias of the autumnal plots. 
 
 One of the farm wagons, with a yellow body and 
 bright red wheels, was prepared in the morning to 
 carry the coffin from Lechlade station ; it was drawn 
 by a sleek roan mare and led by one of the Kelmscott 
 carters. The wagon was wreathed with vine, and strewn 
 with willow boughs over a carpeting of moss. In it 
 the coffin, simple and even beautiful in its severe de- 
 sign, of unpolished oak with wrought iron handles, was 
 placed on its arrival, and over it was laid a piece of 
 Broussa brocade which had been long in Morris's pos- 
 session, and a wreath of bay. The group of mourners 
 followed it along the dripping lanes, between russet 
 hedgerows and silver-grey slabbed stone fences, to the 
 churchyard gate, and up the short lime-avenue to the 
 tiny church. There the Rev. W. F. Adams, Vicar of 
 Little Faringdon, Morris's schoolfellow at Marlborough, 
 and the friend and neighbour of later years at Kelms- 
 cott, read the funeral service. With the family and 
 friends were mingled workmen from Merton Abbey and 
 Oxford Street, comrades of the Socialist League, pupils 
 of the Art Workers' Guild, and Kelmscott villagers in 
 their daily working dress. There was no pomp of organ- 
 ized mourning, and the ceremony was of the shortest and 
 
jet. 63] WILLIAM MORRIS 349 
 
 simplest. Among associates and followers of later years 
 were the few survivors of that remarkable fellowship 
 which had founded the Oxford Brotherhood and the 
 Firm of Red Lion Square ; and at the head of the grave 
 Sir Edward Burne- Jones, the closest and the first friend 
 of all, stood and saw a great part of his own life lowered 
 into earth. <c What I should do, or how I should get 
 on without him," he had once said when Morris's in- 
 creasing weakness became alarming, c< I don't in the 
 least know. I should be like a man who has lost his 
 back." Si unus ceciderit, ab altero fulcietur : va soli ! 
 quia cum ceciderit, non habet sublevantem se. 
 
 As dusk fell, the storm swept more fiercely over Oxford. 
 The driving rain found its way through the roof of the 
 Union Library, and carried away patches of the faded 
 painting with which, in the ardour of his first devotion 
 to art, amid an unbroken band of kindred spirits, con- 
 fident in youth, united in faith and friendship, he had 
 adorned it thirty-nine years before. A new age had 
 since then risen over a new England, and those early 
 days were already receding into the dimness of an almost 
 fabulous past. 
 
 Principes mortales, rem publicam <eternam esse: proin 
 repeterent sollennia : the cold and august words of the 
 Roman Emperor may best express the feeling with which 
 that funeral company dispersed to their homes. A great 
 personality had ceased : yet the strongest feeling in the 
 minds of the survivors was rather that it had returned 
 to, than, in the customary phrase of common usage, 
 passed away from earth. Among the men and women 
 through whom he had so often moved as in a dream, 
 isolated, self-centred, almost empty of love or hatred, he 
 moved no more. It seemed natural that he should go 
 out from among them, not being really of them. c< He 
 doesn't want anybody," so his most intimate friend once 
 
350 THE LIFE OF WILLIAM MORRIS [1896 
 
 said of him : " I suppose he would miss me for a bit, but 
 it wouldn't change one day of his life, nor alter a plan in 
 it. He lives absolutely without the need of man or 
 woman. He is really a sort of Viking, set down here, 
 and making art because there is nothing else to do." 
 Far less easy to realize was his absence henceforward from 
 the surroundings in which and through which he lived 
 almost as in a bodily vesture : from his books and manu- 
 scripts, from his vats and looms, from the grey gabled 
 house and the familiar fields, from the living earth which 
 he loved with so continuous and absorbing a passion. 
 
 c< It came to pass," says the ancient forgotten author 
 of the Volsunga Saga, when he has to tell of the death 
 of the father of King Volsung, "that he fell sick and 
 got his death, being minded to go home to Odin, a thing 
 much desired of many folk in those days." With no 
 such desire had this last inheritor of the Viking spirit 
 approached his end. To be, u though men call you dead, 
 a part and parcel of the living wisdom of all things," 
 still to live somewhere in the larger life of this and no 
 other world, such had been his desire, such his faith and 
 hope throughout the loneliness and fixedness in which 
 he had passed his mortal days. He might seem, now the 
 entanglement of life was snapped, to have resumed his 
 place among the lucid ranks that, still sojourning yet still 
 moving onward, enter their appointed rest and their 
 native country unannounced, as lords that are certainly 
 expedted, and yet there is a silent joy at their arrival. 
 
THE MANOR HOUSE, KELMSCOTT, FROM THE HOME MEAD. 
 
INDEX 
 
 Abbeville visited, i. 72. 
 Acland, Sir H., i. 128. 
 Adams, Rev. W. F., i. 36; ii. 348. 
 ^Eneid, Morris's translation, i. 
 
 321-323. 
 Aitken, Miss, i. 345-346. 
 Akureyri, i. 295. 
 Aldenham, Lord, ii. 328, 
 Allen, Grant, ii. 264. 
 Allingham, W., i. IIO; ii. 75. 
 Allman, J. P., ii. 176. 
 Alphington, Devon, i. 26. 
 "Als ich kanne," motto, i. 107. 
 Alton Towers, i. 325. 
 Amiens Cathedral, i. 96. 
 "Amis and Amillion," i. 195; 
 
 ii. 283. 
 
 Ancient Buildings, Society for 
 Protection of, i. 339-346. 
 
 Ancoats Brotherhood, ii. 114, 
 301. 
 
 Angelico, i. 40; ii. 272. 
 Angling, Morris's love of, i. 218. 
 Anti-Scrape, i. 346. 
 Apocalypse, MS. at the Bodleian, 
 
 i. 40. 
 Arbroath, ii. 161. 
 "Aristomenes," fragment of, pub. 
 
 in the Athenaeum, i. 183, 207. 
 Armansfell, i. 265. 
 Armour, suit of, i. 1 20-1 21 
 Arms of the Morris family, i. II. 
 Arnold, M., i. 336, 366; ii. 83, 
 
 85, 188. 
 
 II. A 
 
 Art Workers' Guild, ii. 198. 
 Arts and Crafts Society, ii. 1 96, 
 225. 
 
 Arundale, Misses, school, i. II. 
 Ashbourne, i. 325. 
 Asmundr, Dean, i. 254. 
 Aubusson tapestry, i. 363. 
 Avebury, i. 24. 
 Aveling, Dr., ii. 141-143. 
 Avranches, letter from, i. 73. 
 Axewater, i. 267. 
 
 Baldwin, Mrs. A., i. 115, 273, 
 
 287, 295, 302, 309. 
 
 Bampton, ii. 2 1 1. 
 
 "Banded Men," i. 299. 
 
 Baring, Mrs., house in Devon- 
 shire, i. 354. 
 
 Batchelor & Son, papermakers, 
 ii. 251. 
 
 Bathstead, i. 261. 
 
 Bax, E. B., ii. 175, 177, 289. 
 
 Bazin, M., brocade-weaver, i. 
 
 Beadon Road meetings, ii. 173, 
 
 178. 
 
 Beauvais, ii. 262. 
 
 Bed valance verses, ii. 268-269. 
 
 Belgium, visit to, in 1874, 3°4- 
 
 Bellamy, H., "Looking Back- 
 ward," ii. 235, 243-244. 
 
 Benson, R. H., ii. 334. 
 
 Benson, W. A. S., ii. 197, 199, 
 323. 
 
354 THE LIFE OF WILLIAM MORRIS 
 
 Beowulf, i. 198; ii. 284. 
 Bergthorsknoll, i. 253. 
 Besant, Mrs., ii. 209. 
 Bestiary of the 12th century, ii. 
 
 323. 
 
 Bibury, 1. 233. 
 
 Birchall, Rev. O., ii. 167. 
 
 Birds, Morris's love for, i. 116. 
 
 "Birmingham, stained-glass win- 
 dow, ii. 209 ; lecture at, ii. 270. 
 
 Bjarg, i. 259. 
 
 "Blanche," a poem, i. 58. 
 
 Blatchford, R., ii. 292. 
 
 Bliss, W. H., i. 26, 293. 
 
 Blockley, ii. 32. 
 
 Blore, E. ii. 277. 
 
 Blunt, Wilfrid, ii. 203, 275, 325. 
 
 Blythborough, ii. 316. 
 
 Boccaccio, u De Claris Mulier- 
 ibus," 1473, i. 194. 
 
 Bock, Canon, colledtion of tex- 
 tile fabrics, ii. 88. 
 
 Bodley, G. F., i. I46-I47 # 
 
 Borrow, G., i. 220. 
 
 Botticelli, ii. 273. 
 
 Bowden, W., ii. 251. 
 
 Bowen, Lord, i. 122, 127, 32 1. 
 
 Box Hill, ii. 160. 
 
 Boyce, G. P., ii. 13. 
 
 Bradford, Wilts, ii. 222. 
 
 Bright, Rev. Dr., ii. 118. 
 
 Brighton, ii. 66. 
 
 Broadbent, Sir W., ii. 323, 330. 
 
 Broadway, i. 340. 
 
 Broadwell, i. 233. 
 
 Brown, F. M., "The Last of 
 England," i. 103; declines to 
 paint at the Oxford Union, 
 118; suggests the Firm, 145; 
 mentioned, i. 160, 175; ii. 
 124. 
 
 Browning, E. B., influence of, 
 i. 58. 
 
 Browning, R., " Bishop Blou- 
 gram" discussed, i. 103. 
 
 Brunnar, i. 265. 
 
 Buckler, John, ii. 286. 
 
 Burden, Miss E., i. 1 54. 
 
 Burden, Robert, i. 136. 
 
 Burford, i. 233, 340. 
 
 Burne-Jones, E., first acquaint- 
 ance with Morris, i. 34 ; 
 reads with him, 37 ; his 
 drawings as a schoolboy, 39; 
 recognition of Morris as a 
 poet, 5 1 ; idea of a Brother- 
 hood, 63 ; journey to France, 
 71 ; decides to be a painter, 
 78; first meets Rossetti, 100; 
 has rooms with Morris, 107 ; 
 his painting on a settle 113- 
 114; paints at the Oxford, 
 Union, 1 1 8- 1 1 9 ; illness at Red 
 Lion Square, 135 ; designs for 
 windows at Scarborough and 
 Brighton, 147 ; paintings at 
 Red House, Upton, 158; 
 moves to the Grange, 192 ; 
 visits Italy with Morris, 293 ; 
 retires from the Firm, 307 ; 
 writes to Morris on Socialist 
 agitation, ii. 155; Morris's 
 estimate of, 337; designs for 
 "The Golden Legend," 279; 
 mentioned, i. 40, 42, 46, 48, 
 51, 61, 62, 64, 71, 80, 81, 
 87, 88, 102, 105, no, in, 
 113, 121, 122, 124, 127, 128, 
 136, 148, 152, 157, 159, 186, 
 191, 194, 277, 304, 307, 320, 
 363; ii. 6, 100,202,319, 322, 
 3*5, 327, 328, 330, 333, 335- 
 
 Burne-Jones, Lady, i. 277, 299, 
 324; ii. 66, 67,75,102, 109, 
 112, 149, 308, 317, 320, 324, 
 33i, 334* 335- 
 
INDEX 
 
 355 
 
 Burne- Jones, Miss Margaret, ii. 
 207. 
 
 Burslem, lecture at, ii. 19. 
 
 Burt, T., i. 350. 
 
 Butler, S., "Erewhon," ii. 90. 
 
 Cambridge, Morris's opinion of, 
 
 i. 69. 
 
 Campfield, Geo., i. 148, 373; 
 
 ii. 42. 
 
 Carlisle, Countess of, letter to, 
 i. 304. 
 
 Carlisle, Earl of, carpet made 
 for, ii. 45 ; decoration of 
 house at Kensington, ii. 52-55, 
 69. 
 
 Carlyle, T., i. 219, 344"345 5 
 28, 76. 
 
 Carpenter, E., ii. 128, 143. 
 Carpet-looms at Hammersmith, 
 
 i. 373- 
 
 Carpets, manufacture of, ii. 4. 
 Carruthers, J., ii. 177, 330. 
 Carshalton, ii. 73. 
 "Catherine," a poem, ii. 257. 
 Catterson-Smith, R., ii. 330, 332. 
 Chamberlain, J., ii. 132. 
 Champion, H. H., ii. 87. 
 Charleville, Countess of, i. 357. 
 Chartres, i. 72. 
 
 Chaucer, influence on Morris, 
 
 i. 62, 178, 197-198; personal 
 resemblance with Morris, 214; 
 Works, Kelmscott Press edi- 
 tion, ii. 278 foil. 
 
 Cherry-Hinton, i. 352. 
 Chintz for bookbinding, ii. 227. 
 Chintzes, ii. 36, 56. 
 Chislehurst, ii. 245. 
 Chiswick Club Hall, ii. 180. 
 Chiswick Horticultural Gardens, 
 
 ii. 228. 
 Christmas Carol, i. 99. 
 
 Cirencester, ii. 18. 
 Clarke, C. Cowden, i. 200. 
 Classical art and literature, ii. 
 
 Cleveland Hall meeting, ii. 174. 
 Clouds, burning of, ii. 216. 
 Cobbett, W., i. 221. 
 Cobden-Sanderson, T. J., ii. 
 
 196, 200, 226. 
 Cockerell, Douglas, ii. 326. 
 Cockerell, S. C, Secretary to 
 
 the Kelmscott Press, ii. 282, 
 
 323, 33°, 331, 334- 
 Coleridge, Lord Chief Justice, 
 ii. 25. 
 
 Collins, C. A., picture of "A 
 
 Good Harvest," i. 70. 
 Colour, Morris's skill in use of, 
 
 i. 312. 
 
 Combe, T., his Pre-Raphaelite 
 
 pictures, i. 71. 
 "Commonweal," ii. 139, 206- 
 
 207. 
 
 Congreve, R., i. 31. 
 Cookham Lock, ii. 12. 
 Coronio, Mrs., letters to, i. 290, 
 325- 
 
 Cracroft, Bernard, i. 90. 
 Crane, W., ii. 47, 100- 10 1, 196, 
 
 202, 226. 
 Crayford, ii. 33-34. 
 Critics and criticism, Morris's 
 
 opinion of, i. 134. 
 
 Dave, Victor, ii. 174. 
 
 Dearie, W., ii. 47. 
 
 "Defence of Guenevere," pub- 
 lication of, i. 129-135 ; re- 
 printed, 320. 
 
 Democratic Federation, ii. 82, 
 
 87. 
 
 De Morgan, Miss M., i. zzz j ii. 
 335- 
 
356 THE LIFE OF WILLIAM MORRIS 
 
 De Morgan, W., i. 1 54, 345-346 ; 
 ii. 16, 33, 43, 75, 121. 
 
 Dettifoss, i. 295. 
 
 Devon Great Consols, i. 14; 
 decline in value, 162. 
 
 Dickens, Morris's hearty appre- 
 ciation of, i. 220. 
 
 Dixon, Canon, reminiscences of 
 " the set " at Oxford, i. 41-42 ; 
 suggests starting the Oxford 
 and Cambridge Magazine, 
 68; opinion of the early poems, 
 92 ; anecdote of Morris at the 
 Manchester Exhibition, 115; 
 preference for the earlier 
 poems, 135; letter to Price, 
 
 Dock strike of 1889, ii. 223-224. 
 Dod Street, ii. 162. 
 Dolmetsch, Arnold, ii. 334. 
 "Dolphins and the Lovers," i. 
 
 Dorchester, Oxon., i, 187; ii. 13. 
 Dorking, ii. 160. 
 "Dorothea, St.," i. 207. 
 Drangey, i. 257, 258, 295. 
 "Dream of John Ball," i. 132. 
 Dreux, i. 75. 
 Dublin, i. 358 ; ii. 156. 
 Duchess of Bayswater, ii. 231. 
 Diirer, A., i. 70, 110. 
 Dyeing, experiments in, i. 353- 
 357- 
 
 Dyeing, practice of, i. 31 1-3 18. 
 
 " Earthly Paradise," plan and de- 
 velopment of, i. 178-183 ; 
 sources of, 204-206. 
 
 Eastern Question, i. 347, 349. 
 
 Edgware, ii. 245. 
 
 Edgware Road meeting, ii. 161. 
 
 Edinburgh, ii. 167. 
 
 Edinburgh Art Congress, ii. 225. 
 
 Ellis, F. S., i. 193-195, 201, 218, 
 235, 236, 272; ii. 2, 87, 165, 
 181, 193, 210, 215, 227, 248- 
 250,252, 254, 256, 274,280, 
 310, 317, 324, 328, 330, 333, 
 335. 
 
 Ellis, Phillis M., ii. 248. 
 Elm House, Walthamstow, i. 1. 
 Ely Cathedral restoration, i. 69. 
 Emigration mania, i. 103. 
 Ems, stay at, i. 201 ; letter from 
 
 to Ellis, 201-202. 
 Epping Forest, i. 7; ii. 314. 
 Erne-water-heath, i. 258. 
 Eton, ii. 11. 
 Evangelicalism, i. 10. 
 Evans, W. H., i. 241, 257, 259, 
 
 261, 262. 
 Evreux, i. 75. 
 
 Exeter College, Oxford, in 1853, 
 i. 32. 
 
 Exeter College tapestry, ii. 241. 
 
 Eyrarbakki, i. 254. 
 
 Eyrbyggja Saga, lines on, i. 263. 
 
 Fairford, ii. 15. 
 Fairwood Fells, i. 264. 
 Faringdon clump, ii. 3. 
 Faroes, i. 244. 
 
 Farringdon Road, offices of the 
 Socialist League, ii. 145. 
 
 Faulkner, C. J., rooms at Pem- 
 broke Coll., i. 35; as mathe- 
 matician, 43 ; helps in the 
 decoration of the Oxford 
 Union, 120 ; member of the 
 firm of Morris & Co., 145; re- 
 turns to Oxford, 175 ; one of 
 the Iceland party, 241, 258; 
 joins the Socialist League, ii. 
 140 ; struck with paralysis, 
 217; mentioned, i. 128, 161, 
 307, 310, 361; ii. 119. 
 
INDEX 
 
 357 
 
 Fearon, D. R., i. 17. 
 Fergusson, J., ii. 3. 
 Firdousi, Shah Nameh, ii. 92, 
 101. 
 
 Firm of Morris, Marshall, Faulk- 
 ner & Co., planned, i. 145-1 53; 
 dissolution of, 305-308. 
 
 Fleetlithe, i. 254. 
 
 Flower, W., ii. 186. 
 
 Forman, Alfred, i. 299. 
 
 Forman, H. B., i. 300. 
 
 "Fortunes of Gyges," i. 195. 
 
 Fouque's " Sintram," apprecia- 
 tion of, i. 41. 
 
 "Frank's Sealed Letter," i. 97. 
 
 Frithiof Saga, i. 299. 
 
 "Frithiof the Bold," i. 300. 
 
 Fuchsius, L., i. 314. 
 
 Fulford, W., i. 35, 42, 44, 45, 
 103, 148. 
 
 Furnivall, F. J., i. 100. 
 
 Genoa, i. 366-367. 
 George, Henry, ii. 81, 83, 117. 
 Gerard's Herbal, i. 314. 
 "Gesta Romanorum," i. 205. 
 Geysirs, i. 257. 
 Glasgow, ii. 218-219. 
 "Glittering Plain," ii. 241, 255. 
 Gobelins tapestry, i. 363. 
 "God of the Poor," ii. 258. 
 Gods tow, ii. 73. 
 "Golden Legend," ii. 248. 
 "Goldilocks and Goldilocks," i. 
 258. 
 
 Great Coxwell Church, i. 13; 
 
 tithe barn, i. 233; ii. 223. 
 Grettir the Strong, i. 258 ; his 
 
 lair, 264. 
 * Grettis Saga" published, i. 201. 
 Grim Goatshoe, i. 269. 
 Guerrault, M., ii. 166. 
 Guest, J. M., i. 47. 
 
 Gunnar's Hall, site of, i. 255. 
 "Gunnlaug Worm-tongue," i. 
 
 201, 300. 
 Guy, Rev. Dr., Morris's tutor, 
 
 i. 25 ; letter to, 191. 
 
 Guy, Rev. F. G., extracts from 
 diary of, i. 353. 
 
 Hadham, i. 361 ; ii, 216. 
 Halifax, i. 352. 
 
 Hammersmith Socialist Society, 
 
 ii. 240, 251. 
 
 Hampton Court tapestries, ii. 1 86, 
 Harris, Sanderson & Harris, i. 2. 
 Hauskuld-stead, i. 259. 
 Havre, i. 78. 
 
 Heckmondwike Company, i. 
 355. 
 
 Heeley, Wilfred, i. 36. 
 Heimskringla, ii. 309. 
 Hellot on wool-dyeing, i. 314. 
 "Hen Thorir," i. 299. 
 Hengill, i. 266. 
 Herdholt, i. 240, 259, 261. 
 Highworth, ii. 3. 
 Hill of Laws, i. 269. 
 Hindhead, ii. 75. 
 Hines, Mr., of Oxford, ii. 319. 
 Hofmannaflotr, i. 266. 
 Hogarth Club, ii. 198. 
 Hogg, Dr. Gordon, ii. 173. 
 Hogni and Hedin, i. 300. 
 Holbein, H., ii. 272, 273. 
 Holiday, Mrs. H., i. 374. 
 Holland, Sir Henry, i. 272. 
 " Hollow Land," a tale, i. 98. 
 Hoole, J. W., i. 131. 
 Hooper, W. H., ii. 265. 
 Horace, MS. of Odes of, i. 303. 
 Horner, Mrs. J. F., i. 280. 
 Horsfall, T. C, ii. 97, 113, 116. 
 House at Upton, built by P. 
 Webb, i. 140. 
 
 II. 
 
 A A 2 
 
358 THE LIFE OF WILLIAM MORRIS 
 
 " House of the Wolfings," i. 98 ; 
 ii. 205. 
 
 Howard, Geo. See Carlisle, Earl 
 of. 
 
 Howard, H. N., ii. 339. 
 
 " Howard the Halt," i. 299. 
 
 Hoxton, ii. 179. 
 
 "Hroi the Fool," i. 300. 
 
 Hughes, Arthur, i. 118, 125, 
 
 129, 147, 160 ; ii. 72. 
 Huntingfield Psalter, ii. 312. 
 Hurley Lock, ii. 12. 
 Hwammfirth, i. 259. 
 Hyndman, H. M., ii. 96, 1 10, 
 
 112, 119, 126, 127, 162, 289. 
 
 Iceland, Morris's first visit to, i. 
 
 240 ; second visit to, 294-295. 
 Iceland relief committee, ii. 77. 
 Icelandic diary, i. 242 foil. 
 Icelandic studies and literature, 
 
 i. 200, 298. 
 Illumination, Morris's skill in, i. 
 
 1 14, 208, 276-277. 
 Image, Selwyn, ii. 267. 
 Inglesham Church, ii. 1 5. 
 Ionides, A., ii. 45. 
 Italy, Morris's comparatively 
 
 small interest in, i. 294. 
 
 Jackson, T. G., ii. 286. 
 "Jason," publication and success 
 
 of, i. 183-184; second edition, 
 
 194. 
 
 Jefferies, R., " After London," ii. 
 144. 
 
 Jeffreys, Messrs., i. 156. 
 Jekyll, Mrs., i. 102. 
 Jenson, N., his types, ii. 248. 
 "John Ball," ii. 168. 
 Johnson, Dr., points of resem- 
 blance with Morris, i. 214; 
 
 ii. 344. 
 
 Jowett, B., i. 146. 
 "Justice," ii. 120. 
 
 Keats, one of Morris's masters, 
 i. 200 ; his admiration for, 219. 
 Kelmscott House, Hammersmith, 
 
 i. 371. 
 
 Kelmscott Manor, i. 225 ; de- 
 scription of, 228-232 ; voyage 
 to from London, ii., 8-14. 
 
 Kelmscott Press, founding of the, 
 
 ii. 247. 
 
 Kirkjubae in the Faroes, i. 247. 
 Kitz, F., ii. 170. 
 Knight, W., ii. 47. 
 
 Lady Place, ii. 12. 
 
 Lago di Garda, i. 368. 
 
 Langford, i. 233. 
 
 Lawrence, E. H., collection of 
 
 MSS., ii. 279. 
 Lawrence, Lord, i. 350. 
 Laxdale, i. 259. 
 Lectures at Oxford, i. 33. 
 Lectures on Socialism, ii. 123. 
 Leighton's "Cimabue," i. 70. 
 Lendon, Mr., i. 356. 
 Lethaby, W. R., ii. 197. 
 Lewes, ii. 67. 
 Lichfield, i. 317-318. 
 Lichfield Cathedral, i. 340. 
 Lincoln, ii. 246. 
 "Lindenborg Pool," i. 97-98. 
 Linnell, Alfred, ii. 192. 
 Lithend, i. 253, 257. 
 Littlehampton, scarlet fever at, 
 
 i. 163. 
 
 "Long Land, The," ii. 258. 
 Lome, Marquis of, ii. 226, 288 
 Louviers, church at, i. 76. 
 "Love is Enough," i. 280. 
 Lubbock, Sir J., ii. 14. 
 Lushington, Sir Godfrey, i. 36, 90. 
 
INDEX 
 
 359 
 
 Lushington, Vernon, i. 36, 90, 
 100. 
 
 Macdonald, Geo., i. 371. 
 Macdonald, H., i. 36. 
 Maclarens, i. 135-136. 
 Mackonochie, Rev. A. H., i. 146. 
 Magnusson, Eirikr, i. 201, 241, 
 
 257, 292 ; ii. 309. 
 Malory's " Morte d' Arthur," i. 
 
 105. 
 
 Mandeville's " Travels," i. 205. 
 Markfleet, i. 257. 
 Marylebone Police Court, ii. 161. 
 Marlow, ii. II. 
 
 Marshall, P. P., i. 147,175, 308. 
 Marx, Karl, ii. 81, 83, 97. 
 Matthiolus, Herbal, i. 314. 
 Maurice, C. E., letters to, on 
 
 Socialism, ii. 102-109. 
 Maurice, F. D., i. 81, 100, 101. 
 "Maying of Guenevere," i. 166. 
 Mediaeval furniture, experiments 
 
 in, i. 113. 
 Memling, Hans, i. 48. 
 Merton Abbey Socialist lectures, 
 
 ii. 170. 
 
 Merton Abbey Works, ii. 31, 
 34-35- 
 
 Middleton, J. H., i. 294; ii. 
 
 *53> 329- 
 Midflrthdale, i. 258. 
 
 Mill, J. S., on Fourier, ii. 79. 
 
 Millais, J. E., " The Rescue," i. 
 
 70 ; " The Vale of Rest," ii. 
 
 156. 
 Milton, i. 219. 
 
 Minster Church, Thanet, i. 10. 
 Mitcham, ii. 176. 
 Monastery, scheme of establish- 
 ing, i. 62. 
 Moore, Albert, i. 1 54. 
 Mordhurst, Mr., ii. 173. 
 
 More, Sir T., " Utopia," ii. 89. 
 Morris, Edgar, ii. 33. 
 Morris, Emma, letter to, i. 22. 
 Morris, Jane Alice, birth and 
 
 christening, i. 160. 
 Morris, Mary, " May," birth, i. 
 
 161. 
 
 Morris, W., birthplace, i. I, 2 ; 
 ancestry, 3 ; goes to Marl- 
 borough school, 15 ; Anglo- 
 Catholic bias, 17 ; leaves Marl- 
 borough, 25 ; matriculates at 
 Exeter College, 26 ; character 
 in youth, 33 ; first acquaint- 
 ance with Burne-Jones, 34 ; 
 regard for Tennyson's verse 
 in college days, 45 ; influence 
 of Ruskin, 47 ; reading of 
 Shakespeare, 47 ; first journey 
 abroad, 48 ; comes of age, 49 ; 
 decides to be an architect, 78 ; 
 declines to take holy orders, 
 84; book -illuminating in 
 1856, 103 ; portrait in the 
 illustrated volume of Tenny- 
 son, 105 ; visits the Low 
 Countries, 107 ; quits Street's 
 office, 107 ; abandons archi- 
 tecture as a profession, 109 ; 
 takes up painting, 1 1 1 ; skill 
 as an illuminator, 114; model 
 for Lancelot or Tristram, 1 20 ; 
 his suit of armour, 1 20-12 1; 
 journey down the Seine, 136; 
 joins the volunteers, 161 ; has 
 rheumatic fever, 163 ; removes 
 from Upton to Queen Square, 
 165; publishes "Jason," 183- 
 184; publishes "The Earthly 
 Paradise," 192; personal ap- 
 pearance, great strength, and 
 other attributes, 217; his taste 
 for the culinary art, 223-224 ; 
 
360 THE LIFE OF WILLIAM MORRIS 
 
 journey to Iceland, 240 ; return 
 from Iceland, 273 ; moves to 
 Horrington House, Chiswick, 
 288; visits Italy, 293 ; second 
 journey to Iceland, 294-295 ; 
 dislike of London, 302 ; resigns 
 directorship of Devon Great 
 Consols, 324 ; joins the East- 
 ern Question Association, 347; 
 issues a manifesto to the work- 
 ing men on the Eastern Ques- 
 tion, 349 ; examiner at South 
 Kensington, 355 ; his first 
 public le&ure, 359 ; his carpet 
 designs, ii. 44; evidence before 
 Technical Instruction Com- 
 mission, 48 ; visit to Paris with 
 Armstrong, 95 ; first appear- 
 ance at a Socialist meeting, 
 96 ; his knowledge of birds, 
 97; founds the Socialist League, 
 132; arrested at Thames Police 
 Court, 147 ; ill with gout, 
 149 ; statement of Socialist 
 policy, 1 52-1 54 ; deposed from 
 editorship of the " Common- 
 weal," 230; establishes the 
 Kelmscott Press, 247; declines 
 to entertain the question of 
 the Laureateship, 287 ; joins 
 in the manifesto of English 
 Socialists, 1893, 289. 
 
 Morris, William, Senr., i. 2, 1 1. 
 
 Morris, Mrs. W., i. 154; por- 
 trait of, by her husband, 135; 
 letters to, 323, 328. 
 
 Morris, Sir Lewis, ii. 185. 
 
 "Morte d' Arthur" tapestries, ii. 
 212. 
 
 Most, Herr, ii. 25. 
 Mouse, the Iceland pony, i. 274- 
 275. 
 
 Mowbray, C. W. ii. 237. 
 
 Munro, A., i. 122. 
 Murray, C. F., i. 123, 208, 299, 
 303, 319-320; ii- 257. 
 
 National Gallery, ii. 273. 
 Nationalization of land, ii. 82. 
 Naworth, visit to, i. 304 ; stained 
 
 glass at, ii. 55. 
 Needlework, experiments in, i. 
 
 129. 
 
 Netmaking, i. 17. 
 
 "News from Nowhere," ii. 243. 
 
 Nichol, Professor, ii. 219. 
 
 Nicoll, D. G., ii. 237. 
 
 Njal Saga, i. 335. 
 
 Njala country, i. 254. 
 
 North France, Morris's love for, 
 
 i. 49 ; ii. 261, 300. 
 "Northern Love Stories, Three," 
 
 i. 300. 
 
 Norway, voyage to, ii. 330. 
 Norwich, ii. 209 ; prosecution of 
 
 Socialists at, 170. 
 Nottingham, i. 325-326. 
 
 Oddi, i. 254. 
 
 Odyssey, translation of, ii. 156- 
 157, 164-165, 180-182. 
 
 Olaf Peacock, i. 260. 
 
 Oldham, Rev. J., i. 24. 
 
 Oneglia, i. 359- 
 
 Ormskirk, i. 352. 
 
 " Orpheus and Eurydice," i. 207. 
 
 Owen, Robert, ii. 97. 
 
 Oxford, changes in, i. 28, 48; 
 later feeling towards, ii. 16 ; 
 Socialist lecture at, 119. 
 
 Oxford and Cambridge Maga- 
 zine, i. 67-68, 88, 108. 
 
 Oxford, restoration of St. Mary's 
 spire, ii. 286. 
 
 Oxford Professorship of Poetry, 
 i< 336-337- 
 
INDEX 
 
 361 
 
 Oxford Union, paintings at, i. 117. 
 Oxford Street premises of the 
 Firm, i. 353. 
 
 Padua, i. 369. 
 
 Palomydes, picture of, i. 119. 
 Paris, first visit to, i. 73. 
 Paris Congress of Socialists, ii. 
 223. 
 
 " Peace " tapestry, ii. 226. 
 Pearson, J. L., ii. 277, 314. 
 Peterborough Cathedral, ii. 313. 
 Pewsey, ii. 3. 
 
 "Pilgrims of Hope," ii. 140, 168. 
 Plint, T. E., patron of the Pre- 
 
 Raphaelites, i. 135. 
 " Poems by the Way," ii. 257. 
 " Poetic upholsterer," ii. 24. 
 Poetry, Morris's first essays in, i. 
 
 52. 
 
 Poetry, theory and practice of, 
 
 Political interest, i. 338. 
 Pollen, J. H., i. 40, 118, 125. 
 Potter, Geo., i. 350. 
 Powell, F. York, ii. 166. 
 Powell, Messrs., glass, i. 1 50, 
 Pre-Raphaelite school of paint- 
 ing, ii. 270-271. 
 
 Price, Cormell, i. 36, 126, 129, 
 
 148, 304, 340; ii. 32. 
 Prince, type-cutter, ii. 261. 
 Prinsep, Val., i. 118, 125. 
 Profit-sharing, ii. 61. 
 Pugin, A. W., i. 325. 
 
 Queen Square, i. 174. 
 
 Radford, Ernest, ii. 210. 
 Raphael's Ansidei Madonna, ii. 
 
 273 
 
 Rashdall's "Universities," ii. 321. 
 
 Red House, Upton, i. 139-145; 
 life at, 1 60; given up, 165. 
 
 Red Lion Mary, i. 112. 
 
 Red Lion Square, residence in, 
 i. 112. 
 
 Reims, ii. 263. 
 
 Reykholt, i. 264. 
 
 Reykjavik, i. 252, 295. 
 
 Ridding, Bishop, i. 33. 
 
 Ritchie, Mrs. R., i. 155. 
 
 Riviere, Wm., i. 123. 
 
 Ronalds, F., i. 371. 
 
 "Roots of the Mountains," ii. 
 214, 227. 
 
 Rossetti, D. G., his enthusiasm 
 for painting, i. 105; his influ- 
 ence on Morris, 1 1 1 ; engaged 
 to paint at the Oxford Union, 
 117; his share in the circular 
 issued by the Firm, 152; ex- 
 tinction of Rossetti's artistic 
 influence over Morris, 200 ; 
 drawing of " The Ms at Ems," 
 204 ; joint tenant of Kelmscott 
 with Morris, 235; opinion of 
 "Love is Enough," 280; retires 
 from the Firm, end of intimacy, 
 308; his criticism on "Sigurd," 
 335; want of interest in 
 politics, ii. 92-93 ; lavish gen- 
 erosity, 94. 
 
 Rottingdean, ii. 66. 
 
 Rouen, i. 48. 
 
 Routh, M. J., i. 30. 
 
 Rowley, C, ii. 114. 
 
 Ruskin, J., Morris's early admira- 
 tion for, i. 38 ; "On the Nature 
 of Gothic," ii. 27 5 ; mentioned, 
 i. 219; ii. 199, 201, 275. 
 
 Russell Club, Oxford, ii. 119. 
 
 Saga Library, ii. 247. 
 
362 THE LIFE OF WILLIAM MORRIS 
 
 St. Alban's, Holborn, i. 146. 
 St. James's Palace decoration, ii. 
 30. 
 
 St. Mark's, Venice, i. 370 ; ii. 5, 
 172. 
 
 Saunders, Mr., Police Magistrate, 
 
 ii. 147. 
 Scheu, A., ii. 95, 127. 
 Scotland, ii. 143. 
 Scott, Sir G., i. 340 ; ii. 222, 
 
 277. 
 
 Scott, W. B., i. no, 123, 280; 
 ii. 165. 
 
 Seddon's Hammersmith Church, 
 ii. 97. 
 
 Shah Abbas, carpet of the time 
 
 of, i. 352. 
 Shairp, Principal, i. 337. 
 Shaw, G. B., ii. 79, 289. 
 Shaw, R. Norman, i. 102, 141. 
 Shelley's "Skylark," i. 57; his 
 
 incapacity for narrative poetry, 
 
 178. 
 
 Shelton, Emma, mother of Wm. 
 
 Morris, i. 1 ; her death, ii. 300. 
 Shelton, Jos., Morris's maternal 
 
 grandfather, i. 3. 
 " Sigurd the Volsung," i. 311, 
 
 330. 
 
 Sigurdson, Jon, i. 252. 
 Singlestick, Morris's skill at, i. 
 
 65. 
 
 Sinodun Hill, i. 187. 
 Skaptar Jokul, i. 298. 
 Skeidara, i. 298. 
 Skjaldbreid, i. 265. 
 Sleath, W., ii. 47. 
 Smith, F. and R., i. 3 5 3 ; ii. 24 1 . 
 Smith, John, ii. 47. 
 Snaefellsness, i. 253, 261. 
 Snorri the Priest, i. 270. 
 Socialism, innate in Morris,i.338; 
 beginning of interest in, ii. 23. 
 
 Socialist divisions, ii. 1 49-1 51. 
 
 Socialist League, ii. 129; end of 
 the, 240. 
 
 Soissons Cathedral, ii. 264. 
 
 South Kensington Museum, i. 
 176, 374; Morris as Examiner 
 of Art at, ii. 49. 
 
 Southwold, i. 201. 
 
 Sparling, H. H., ii. 177. 
 
 " Speculum Humanae Salva- 
 tionist' Culembourg, 1483, ii. 
 
 Stained-glass windows, ii. 37-38. 
 Stanhope, J. R. Spencer, i. 118, 
 125. 
 
 Stanley, Eliz., grandmother of 
 
 W. Morris, i. 2. 
 Stanmore, ii. 245. 
 Stephen, Sir Jas., i. 345. 
 Stephens, F. G., i. 340. 
 Stepney, lecture at, ii. 145. 
 Stepniak, S., funeral of, ii. 320. 
 Stonehenge, ii. 2. 
 Stratford, Socialist meetings at, 
 
 ii. 159. 
 
 Straumey in the Faroes, i. 246. 
 Street, G. E., i. 83, 87, 102, 106. 
 Street -preaching of Socialism, 
 
 ii. 97. 
 Stykkisholm, i. 261. 
 Sumner, Heywood, ii. 197. 
 Sunday morning meetings of 
 
 Morris and Burne -Jones, i. 
 
 192. 
 
 Surtees, F., Morris's delight in 
 
 his sporting novels, i. 220. 
 Sussex chairs, ii. 44. 
 Swan, i. 127. 
 
 Swinburne, A. C, i. 127, 131, 
 160, 180, 323, 336; ii. 74, 
 283. 
 
 "Tables Turned," ii. 187.190. 
 
INDEX 
 
 Tangley Manor, ii. 186. 
 Tapestry - loom at Kelmscott 
 
 House, i. 373. 
 Tapestry-weaving, i. 362-365 ; ii. 
 
 46 ; Flora and Pomona pieces, 
 
 ii. 100-101. 
 Taylor, G.Warrington, i. 175; 
 
 ii. 44. 
 
 Tennyson, his vogue at Oxford 
 in 1853, i. 44; his Arthurian 
 poems, 299. 
 
 Tewkesbury Abbey, i. 340. 
 
 Thames, voyages up the, ii. 9- 1 4. 
 
 Thames Police Court, ii. 147. 
 
 Thingmeads, i. 267. 
 
 Thingvalla, i. 253, 264. 
 
 Thorir Red-beard, i. 258. 
 
 Thorodstead, i. 259. 
 
 Thorpe, B., " Northern Mytho- 
 logy," i. 98. 
 
 Thorshaven, i. 245. 
 
 "Thorstein Staff- smitten," i. 
 300. 
 
 Thursfield, J. R., i. 124, 336. 
 Tiles, ii. 42-43. 
 Tiptoft Missal, ii. 312. 
 Tolstoi, L., ii. 204. 
 Tomsen's at Reykjavik, i. 296. 
 Torcello, i. 368. 
 Toynbee, A., ii. 1 17. 
 Tradition in craftsmanship, ii. 48. 
 Trafalgar Square riot, 1886, ii. 
 151. 
 
 Trafalgar Square meeting, 1887, 
 
 ii. 190-192. 
 Tristram and Iseult, ii. 74-75. 
 Trojan War, unpublished poems 
 
 on the, i. 166-173. 
 Troy tapestry at S. Kensington, 
 
 ii. 171. 
 Tullamore, i. 357, 359. 
 Turco-Russian War of 1877, i. 
 
 348-350. 
 
 Typography, ii. 213. 
 Tyrwhitt, St. John, i. 127. 
 
 University education, i. 84. 
 "Unknown Church,"a tale,i. 97. 
 Upton, house at, i. 140. 
 
 Van Eyck, i. 48, 107 ; ii. 272- 
 273- 
 
 Venice, i. 368 ; ii. 5. 
 Verona, i. 369. 
 
 Virgil, illuminated, i. 209, 303. 
 Virgil, translation of, i. 319-320, 
 
 321-323. 
 Volsunga Saga published, i. 208. 
 
 Wagner's music, i. 299. 
 "Wake, London Lads," i. 351, 
 361. 
 
 Walham Green, ii. 180. 
 Walker, Emery, ii. 213, 226, 
 
 250-251, 262, 324, 335. 
 Walker, F., pictures, ii. 156. 
 Wall-paintings at Oxford, i. 118- 
 
 I2 S . 
 
 Wall-papers, i. 155-156; ii. 57. 
 
 Wallace's " Land Nationaliza- 
 tion," ii. 89. 
 
 Wallingford, ii. 13. 
 
 Wallis, H., i. 106. 
 
 Wandle, River, ii. 70-71. 
 
 Wardle, Geo., i. 189, 288, 312, 
 315, 316; ii. 36-40, 58, 60, 
 
 135, 172. 
 Wardle, T., ii. 167. 
 Wardle, Sir T., of Leek, i. 313, 
 
 315-316, 324, 351, 363; ii. 
 
 331. 
 
 Warner, Metford, i. 156. 
 Waterdale, i. 258. 
 Water House, i. 18. 
 Watts, G. F., portrait of Morris, 
 i. 213. 
 
364 THE LIFE OF WILLIAM MORRIS 
 
 Waverley Novels, Morris's early 
 
 reading of the, i. 5, 8. 
 Webb, Philip, i. 102, 136, 139, 
 
 143, 154, 160, 175, 192, 307; 
 
 ii. 41, 306, 335. 
 Webb, Sidney, ii. 289. 
 "Well at the World's End,"i. 98. 
 Wensum, River, ii. 209. 
 West Ham Police Court, ii. 158. 
 Westbury, Wilts, ii. 221. 
 Westmanna-firth, i. 249. 
 Westminster Abbey, ii. 276. 
 White Horse, Berkshire, i. 12. 
 Wilkinson, Dr., i. 25. 
 William of Malmesbury, i. 206. 
 Windmill Psalter, ii. 328. 
 Windus, T., picture collector, i. 
 
 7 1 ' 
 
 Wood-engraving, Morris's skill 
 in, i. 87 ; blocks to illustrate 
 
 " Cupid and Psyche " cut by 
 
 him, 190. 
 Woodford Hall, i. 9. 
 Woodford stocks and cage, i. 6. 
 Woodward, B., i. 117. 
 "Wooing of Swanhild," i. 208. 
 Woolner, T., goes to Australia, 
 
 i. 103. 
 Worcester, ii. 208. 
 Wordsworth, i. 219. 
 Work and workmen, ii. 65. 
 Working Men's College, i. 100. 
 Wren's City Churches, i. 345- 
 
 346 ; ii. 277. 
 Wyatt, A. J., ii. 284, 332. 
 Wyatt, James, ii. 277. 
 
 Yarmouth, ii. 225. 
 Yonge, Miss, "Heir of Red- 
 clyffe," i. 41. 
 
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